Greenfield suspects that the rise in popularity of Netflix has a lot to do with the rise in on-demand content, as consumers are just no longer interested in ownership. If this is the case it could spell trouble for Blu-ray: Hollywood is banking that physical media still has a few years of life left.

Google Searches Predict the Future?

Searches for DVD terms such as "DVDs," "movies on DVD," "new DVD releases," and "top DVD rentals" were off some 45 percent since their late 2008 peak, according to Google data. Contrast this with Netflix, whose query growth has eclipsed 90 percent for each of the past two years. Has the term Netflix become synonymous with home video like Google has to search?

The entertainment service's rise in search queries does match up pretty well with its dramatic subscriber growth as of late. However the Google research paper that Greenfield cites in his report also notes that current subscribers themselves were increasingly using the term Netflix in their own searches.

If that's the case, maybe my Google analogy isn't that far off.