J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth reports back from a recent huddle with Netflix managers, and says he thinks they’re done writing checks for a while: “We believe the vast majority of Netflix’s domestic streaming spend for 2012 … has already been announced or committed. Accordingly, we would not expect Netflix to spend aggressively or announce major new deals until management has better visibility on U.S. subscriber growth.”

Anmuth gives himself some wiggle room in his prediction — it’s possible that CEO Reed Hastings still has some whopper deals he’s signed but hasn’t announced yet — but the winking and nudging seems to indicate that the checkbook has gone away.

Part of the Netflix pitch in recent months has been that it’s going to be spending a lot of money beefing up its streaming video catalog, in part because it won’t be spending it on a Starz deal that gave it access to Disney and Sony movies. And Hastings says that, increasingly, Netflix is going to be paying a premium for stuff you won’t be able to find anywhere else — it’s one of the reasons his content bill is jumping to $3.3 billion, up from $1.2 billion a year ago.

Recent Netflix deals include a new pact to stream DreamWorks Animation movies, which used to run on Time Warner’s HBO, and a deal to grab reruns from the CW, the broadcast joint venture between Turner and CBS. And the company has made one high-profile commitment to original content, via “House of Cards,” the Kevin Spacey/David Fincher miniseries that will run next year.

Are those kind of deals enough to keep Netflix subscribers happy, or to lure new ones back to the service? We may get some hints from Hastings and company in the next few weeks, as they hit the investor-conference circuit. Netflix CFO David Wells will appear at a Credit Suisse gathering on Nov. 29, and Hastings will speak at a UBS conference on Dec. 6.

You would think the settlement of a major dispute would goose the stock of a company, but Yahoo’s deal with its Chinese partner Alibaba Group on Friday did exactly the opposite.

Despite the clearing of an obvious overhang to its shares, the stock of the Silicon Valley Internet giant dropped almost three percent Friday to close at $13.10. While the ongoing federal budget wrangling was partly to blame, it was only a very small part with an overall market decline of under one percent.

A tepid reaction to the deal — in which Yahoo, Alibaba and Japan’s SoftBank came to terms over the spinoff of Alibaba’s Alipay payments unit after much wrangling over the move — came quickly from Wall Street analysts.

A report titled “Yahoo Inc: Alipay Agreement: Better than Nothing, But Not That Great,” by J.P. Morgan’s Doug Anmuth, was typical. Pointing to no clarity on an IPO of the Chinese assets of Alibaba and that “prior to the divestiture, Alibaba Group owned 100% of Alipay and all of its income, which is now reduced to 37.5% ownership of Alipay and 49.9% share of the pre-tax income,” he noted that Wall Street “has recently assigned no value to Yahoo!’s share of the asset.”

Well, less than zero, if the stock decline is taken into account, which means Yahoo’s market cap is now just over $17 billion.

According to sources close to the situation, especially since Yahoo’s Asian assets make up more than $9 billion of that valuation, private equity investors and others are pulling out their spreadsheets once again about a possible takeover or privatizing of Yahoo.

Several months ago, for example, former News Corp. exec Peter Chernin had been contemplating a friendly bid with partners such as Providence Equity Partners and others. While there have been rumors recently that he has reengaged in that effort, that is unclear.

Sources also note that Yahoo’s top execs, especially CEO Carol Bartz, and also members of its board, are perplexed that the settlement in China — a positive development — had the opposite effect on the stock.

It’s part of a continuing decline. Yahoo shares are down almost 26 percent in the past three months. Most Web stocks — such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft — are strongly up in that period. The only other obvious laggard is AOL, which is down almost 16 percent in the past three months.

In a note to clients this morning, Barclays Capital analyst Doug Anmuth hazards a guess: Five to six million units sold in 2010, based on distribution through T-Mobile at launch and Verizon Wireless (VZ) by spring.

That’s quite a number, considering that Motorola’s (MOT) 2010 global smartphone shipments are expected to be somewhere around 13 million units. And, according to Anmuth, Nexus One sales should allow Google (GOOG) to book incremental revenue of $2.6 billion–$3.2 billion. Not bad for a first retail effort from a company that’s not exactly known for retailing. After all, cellphones are not an easy business to get into.

[Image Credit: Search Engine Land]

So bear this in mind when reviewing the newest comScore (SCOR) search numbers, which show Microsoft (MSFT) continuing to make modest search share gains. Bing is now up nearly a full point since May, when Microsoft introduced the new “decision engine.”

If you’re in glass-half-empty mode, you can complain that the blitz of publicity (free and paid) for Bing should have moved the needle farther. But if you’re a half-full type, you can argue that there is a very large swath of people–even those with a passing interest in the Internet–who have no idea Microsoft has a new search engine. Which means there is a very large swath of potential converts.**

Here are the July data, courtesy of JP Morgan’s Imran Khan. Note that both Google (GOOG) and Yahoo (YHOO) saw share drop by 0.03 percent (click chart to enlarge):

And if you’ve already had your fill of the Bing ad blitz, brace yourself. Barclays analyst Doug Anmuth predicts another deluge in a few months “as we move closer to the holiday season, specifically highlighting the Cashback program and other differentiated features.”

Here’s the Bing spot that left my fellow moviegoer bemused (note that the ad has its own overlay ad at the 10-second mark for…Bing):

*Kafka At the Movies minireview: Way better than “Punchline.” And if you like your Adam Sandler angry (which I do) and your Seth Rogen slimmer (meh), you’ll be happy. But at two-hours-plus, way too long.

**Alternate take: You might worry that Microsoft’s decision to describe Bing as a “decision engine” may be confusing potential converts.

I can attest that the streaming service is indeed excellent–enough so that I’m likely to drop my subscription to Time Warner’s (TWX) HBO very soon. What I can’t tell you is the number of Netflix subscribers who are actually using the service, because Netflix (NFLX) isn’t offering up any real data about the program–only that “millions” used the service in the last quarter.*

But! That data point alone is enough to suggest that more than 20 percent of the company’s subscribers are using the service.

Here’s the algebra, courtesy of Barclays Capital’s Doug Anmuth: Netflix ended the quarter with 9.4 million subscribers. If “millions” means at least two million, than that means at least 21 percent of the company’s customers use streaming–while continuing to use DVD and Blu-ray discs.

That strikes me as a fairly astonishing number, given that it’s still not a simple process to get Netflix’s stuff on your TV, where you can best appreciate it. There’s now a handful of devices, like Roku’s specialized box and Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, designed to get the company’s movies and shows on your big(ish) screen, and more on the way, like LG’s TVs that come prewired for the service.

But most of this stuff is getting viewed on viewer’s laptops, Netflix says. Just think of what the adoption rate will be like when that switches to TVs.

*A reader suggests that Netflix may not mean millions of viewers, but millions of views, or some other obfuscation. I thought about that one, too, and double-checked Hasting’s remarks, via Seeking Alpha. Here’s the relevant excerpt: “Our existing subscribers are watching instantly in ever greater numbers and in just the last month millions of our subscribers got more value from their Netflix subscription by streaming.”

Bear in mind that these are his scripted remarks, pre Q&A. So it seems to me he was being very deliberate here — he’s got a lot of folks using his Web service, and he wants to brag about it.

[Image Credit: jeffgunn]

That debate has been all over the Web since News Corp. won its battle to buy Dow Jones (owner of this site) last week, including posts by Jeff Jarvis and Fred Wilson in favor of the move.

But former MarketWatch head Larry Kramer disagreed, noting that his old site should be the free product, while the Journal’s content should remain premium.

Sorry, Larry, but I vote–and I know Murdoch (pictured here from a magazine spread with an Apple computer at the ready, apparently) definitely does not preside over a democracy–yes, ma’am, um, sir, for a free WSJ.com.

(And just to show this is not a kiss-up to the new boss, but a cogent analysis of the landscape for the Journal moving forward under Murdoch, here is a video interview posted below that I did in Los Angeles with Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser back in May about the possible News Corp. takeover and how I felt about the situation. Not so happy and also really wrong about Rupe’s chances of winning Dow Jones, as you will see.)

Also, I have posted many times on this subject, such as this recent piece.

There are, of course, valid arguments to be made to keep the Journal’s much-admired online subscription model, combined with freeing up more content offerings over time.

Interestingly, in an interview with paidContent.org last week, WSJ publisher Gordon Crovitz said: “So far, our analysis says the way to maximize revenues and earnings is to have a mixed model.”

While I hate to differ with Crovitz, who helped us immeasurably in getting this site up and running as a free one, I think an open and ad-supported model is the only way to go now, especially under a larger and more powerful (and, most important, global) company like News Corp. that can really vault the site to higher prominence and higher traffic.

And given that the Journal’s online site garners estimated revenues of about $65 million from its paid efforts, which is admirable, it is chump change for News Corp. to try turbocharging the site as a free one, an experiment that will surely pay back the short-term cost.

An interesting analysis released last week by Lehman Brothers’ Doug Anmuth looks at the trade-off–more page views are likely to be gained by going free, although with possibly lowered ad revenues in the short term and lower ad revenues per page in general.

That sounds about right, as it is likely in time and with the marketing muscle of News Corp. that WSJ.com could go from its current 2.6 million unique visitors globally a month to three times that or more.

More importantly, while it has almost hit an impressive 1 million paid subscribers, an audience that has been growing, the online paid site is only going to gain so many more subscribers before that paid-wall people hit finally takes a hit itself.

Most importantly, while a good product, the paid version simply creates a situation in which the Journal is not as relevant as it could and should be. I know Journal execs have heard this before and would argue the paper is influential with a much more elite audience willing to pay the annual fee for access.

But, to my mind, too much of that is a lot of expense-account money talking. That same audience would remain and expand in an unpaid scenario and also add many more who get less excellent, but still adequate, coverage from a plethora of finance sites now.

(By the way, the rumors that the New York Times will end its TimesSelect, which gates the best stuff behind a paid wall, are back again, courtesy of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. Who knows what the Times will do, but it should dump the dumb system, which only irks readers and, I assume, its imprisoned star writers.)

And for the hyper-elite crowd, there are still all kinds of premium content that can be charged for to accompany the free site. In addition, business networking tools and other features could be ladled on (why in the world is Facebook, and not The Wall Street Journal, the de facto social-networking site right now for Silicon Valley, for example) to create a very loyal and high-level audience.

I could go on, but why not let Murdoch, who floated one of the more intriguing ideas in a very interesting interview he did with Time in late June before he won his quest to nab Dow Jones:

“What if, at the Journal, we spent $100 million a year hiring all the best business journalists in the world? Say 200 of them. And spent some money on establishing the brand but went global–a great, great newspaper with big, iconic names, outstanding writers, reporters, experts. And then you make it free, online only. No printing plants, no paper, no trucks,” he said. “How long would it take for the advertising to come? It would be successful, it would work and you’d make … a little bit of money. Then again, the Journal and the Times make very little money now.”

Ouch. But what-if indeed, especially if Murdoch is footing the bill to find out?