Yeah I hear what you are trying to say it's just wrong. Assets never become a liability that's not how accounting works. An asset can have a liability tied to it via debt but once that is paid off you just have the asset and accumulated depreciation. Think also of the enormous amount of tangible physical infrastructure required to maintain these platforms all that stuff has very real value even if Netflix closed their business today. Netflix has an enormous balance sheet with very real and tangible assets that justify their equity position. Take a peek at their balance sheet https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/NFLX/balance-sheet/ If you look at the details under current assets they have $40 billion in assets, $27 billion of which are intangible assets i.e goodwill + the value of their platform As to the lifespan of intangibles GAAP guidance is 3-5 years for depreciation not 10 or even 30 its much less.