I think they renamed the DVD service so that it allows them the flexibility to sell it off at a later stage, I dont see anyone mentioning this but it is quite common for businesses to sell parts of the business to gain cash to pump into their future expansions. In this case it makes sense to put 100% into streaming.
I agree. They had to know they'd confuse and alienate people by changing the name of the service _and_ creating an whole new website for people to figure out. But it does allow them to extract the highest value should they sell it off later (and they will).
With plans to sell there was only two things that would have been even more bone-headed than what they did:
:a => "Sell it as Netflix DVD (or something like that) and have two companies named Netflix running around."
:b => "Sell it and force the acquiring company to change the name, in which case they would have to accept a huge discount on the value of the business."
When they split the revenue without having a 'combined plan' discount, I was pretty sure the DVD half was going to die. They were just planning for it. My theory is that they are going to sell it before it stops being profitable... But keeping it as a separate company allows them to let it die without it taking the whole thing down, if worst comes to worst.
