Hulu: Google’s Next Acquisition?

Hulu, the great premium video site is now the center of attention of big companies. Yahoo, Amazon and Dish network are bidding really high to acquire the site. According to the Financial Times, these giants are offering between $1.5 billion and $2 billion for Hulu. But not only the site is beign sold, the subscription service and the rights to its exclusive content for at least two years are on the deal too.

Google also seems to be interested on Hulu, but in a larger scale. You can use your imagination to see what the search giant wants. Access to more content for a longer period of time can be negotiated with a couple of billions more by Google. However, neither the exact amount nor the intentions have been confirmed.

The acquisition will be really important for Google, because it not only gives a boost to Youtube but also helps to give a push to a struggling product like Google TV product. Remember that content providers decide to block their content towards Google TV devices, so they are a mess right now.

Although the deal is a really good one, it has a big problem for Google. Initially, Hulu was created as a response to a big menace for the TV networks: Youtube.  Hulu is a joint venture between NBC Universal, Fox and Disney to strike back against Youtube and prevent Google to take over the web video services. So Google will have to soothe any problem with Hulu’s content providers which are basically their competition.  Tough one.

It is still too soon to come with any conclusion on this deal, but it will be very interesting to see if Google’s bid is good enough to Hulu’s owners to sell it or maybe they realize that it is a rare gem to sell that easily. We will expect to hear more about this since they will discuss the different bids last week.

What do you think about this? Give more power to Google to provide more awesome services around the world  or do something with the other companies?

Share your ideas in the comment section.