I believe it when they say it costs netflix more to ship a movie then it does to stream it but there are a few points to bear in mind.

1) even with a “unlimited” dvd deliver there is a maximum number of dvds your going to be able to watch in a given month just due to the delay in shipping out and shipping back. at best you can push roughly ~15 dvds a month if your hard core. With streaming i have had days off or sick days where i have watched full seasons of TV shows in a day which is the equivalent of 4 disks in a day! So it could be possible to end up burning more cost for Netflix via streaming. Again this is looking at a unlikely extreme but serves to make a point about relative cost from the perspective of “per-user” as apposed to “per-movie”.

2) In the USA Today article, the comments they make about the cost; “analysts say” ~ “The cost of shipping a DVD can be as much as 75 cents per disc and; ” estimates that it costs just 5 cents to 10 cents to stream “. The two things to keep in mind when you read this is that a) they have no hard evidence as to what the real costs are. While you can do a rough estimation on real world costs, the fact of the matter is that we do not know what deals Netflix has with both its stream host or with the US post office. b) Analysts are paid to come up with extreme statistics to draw eyeballs to their web sites.

3) this article does not take into account the rapidly increasing cost of securing streaming rights. Netflix started out “tossing in” streaming as fluff to pad the DVD service. As a result Netflix has proven the worth of streaming and now is stating to have to fight with the likes of Amazon, Apple, Blockbuster, etc. to secure rights to stream content.

Bottom line, i’m not arguing that streaming is or is not cheaper, in the end, just that the costs of it are going up, so much so that streaming can no longer be a freebie add on to a old business.

In regards to Googles new “Google+”; They did it right.

P.S. your idea of rights management still suck ass

In regards to the new “Google+”; WOOT! finally something from you that has a good interface!