Right, we'll have to see how it goes. The point of buying Netflix would be acquiring its content delivery apparatus and other technical assets, not its subscriber base.

It's possible Disney will get the kinks sorted out and start rolling a good-enough CDN on their own, making the benefit in acquiring Netflix minimal. It'd also make it much cheaper to acquire if they could wait a few quarters for the damage to start showing up on Netflix's balance sheet. But the longer they wait, the longer they deprive themselves of Netflix's best-in-class content delivery network, which already has near-universal penetration.

It's ultimately a question of whether Disney sees a bigger risk in the expenditures necessary to buy up Netflix or the chance that technical issues will continue to haunt the Disney+ ramp-up, leading to a loss in consumer confidence and subsequent retreat back to third-party streaming platforms.

One thing is certain: Disney+ is an existential threat to Netflix, and Netflix's only hope is that the implementation will continue to flop hard enough that consumers lose the appetite for it immediately.