Netflix, Inc. is an American over-the-top media services provider, headquartered in Los Gatos, California. Founded in 1997 by Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph in Scotts Valley, California, the company’s primary business is its subscription-based streaming service, which offers online streaming of a library of films and television programs including those produced in-house.

In 2007, Netflix expanded its business with the introduction of streaming media, while retaining the DVD and Blu-ray rental service. The company expanded internationally, with streaming made available to Canada in 2010 and continued growing its streaming service from there; by January 2016, Netflix services operated in over 190 countries  it is available worldwide except Mainland China, Syria, North Korea and Crimea.

 Netflix is the world’s 10th-largest internet company by revenue.Netflix was founded on August 29, 1997, in Scotts Valley, California, by Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. Randolph worked as a marketing director for Hastings’ company, Pure Atria. Randolph was a co-founder of MicroWarehouse, a computer mail order company, and was later employed by Borland International as vice president of marketing. Hastings, a computer scientist and mathematician, sold Pure Atria to Rational Software Corporation in 1997 for $700 million in what was then the richest acquisition in Silicon Valley history. They came up with the idea for Netflix while commuting between their homes in Santa Cruz and Pure Atria’s headquarters in Sunnyvale while waiting for government regulators to approve the merger,although Hasting has given several different explanations for how the idea was created.

Netflix introduced the monthly subscription concept in September 1999, and then dropped the single-rental model in early 2000. Since that time, the company has built its reputation on the business model of flat-fee unlimited rentals without due dates, late fees, shipping and handling fees, or per-title rental fees.

As of July 2018, Netflix had 130 million total subscribers worldwide, including 57.38 million in the United States.Their efforts to produce new content, secure the rights for additional content, and diversify through 190 countries has resulted in the company racking up billions in long-term debt: $21.9 billion as of September 2017, up from $16.8 billion from the same time the previous year, although only $6.5 billion of this is long-term debt; the remaining are long-term obligations