Source: NYT > Business (paywall)
Netflix, YouTube, and Amazon are each building internal marketplaces to sell competing streaming subscriptions—a structural inversion where the platforms themselves become distribution channels for rival services. This shifts power away from app-hopping friction and toward whoever controls the default viewing surface, making the hosting platform's data and recommendation engine the real product being sold to competitors. The winner isn't the one with the best content; it's whoever gets users to default-open their app first, turning aggregation into a new battleground for subscriber acquisition.