Shares of Netflix have been absolutely hammered in the past five days, with the one-time high-flying video streaming service shedding almost 20 percent of its value after announcing that it will likely lose money next year.

Netflix’s market value has collapsed in recent months, with investors now valuing the company at $3.7 billion. Just two months ago, Netflix was worth $6.8 billion. Not long ago, it was in the mid teens. Ouch.

At some point, potential acquirers may circle, with a stock analyst suggesting back in September that Netflix was an “attractive asset” at that time. And who might emerge?

One company that’s been floated as a potential acquirer in the past is Amazon.com, which has been pushing heavily into video streaming by inking deals with Disney-ABC Television Group and others. With the release of the Kindle Fire, which essentially is a media consumption device, Amazon needs video content.

As The Wall Street Journal reported today, Netflix also is under fire for buying back shares of the company’s stock at high prices and failing to build a “cash cushion” to protect against a slowdown in the business. And with reports of its 2012 losses, Netflix is a company on the ropes.

Could Amazon.com make a bid now that Netflix is faltering?

Well, the two companies are actually connected on the back-end in bigger ways than you might think. PaidContent.org reported this week that Netflix — which has been a big user of Amazon Web Services for the past few years –plans to move its billing and payment systems to the AWS cloud infrastructure.

And the connections between the two companies became even more apparent in a SEC filing this week. Netflix said in the filing:

Currently, we run the majority of our computing at AWS. Given this, along with the fact that we cannot easily switch our AWS operations to another cloud provider, any disruption of or interference with our use of AWS would impact our operations and our business would be adversely impacted.

While the retail side of Amazon may compete with us, we do not believe that Amazon will use the AWS operation in such a manner as to gain competitive advantage against our service.

Talk about leverage.

UPDATE: Just saw this great piece titled “Netflix: Down, but not out” from Fortune’s Duff McDonald. He concludes with a statement about Amazon:

Oh, and one more thing: as with its loss-leader war against Apple with the Kindle Fire, Amazon has shown signs that it intends to be a major player in streaming content. It can do that in one of two ways. One: spend the billions that Netflix has already spent on content to try to duplicate its offerings, and hope it can lure subscribers away from the industry leader. Two: spend those same billions to just buy Netflix outright. If you were Jeff Bezos, which would you do?

Follow us on Twitter @geekwire.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.