

Google in preliminary talks to buy Hulu - trustfundbaby
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2011/06/google-in-preliminary-talks-to-buy-hulu-.html

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e1ven
In Levy's "In the Plex", he writes about Google's original idea getting into
video- They wanted to lay down with the content industry in much the same way
that Hulu is now. Have all syndicated content, ads, the works.

They tried it with Google Video, and had a hard time signing the deals, and
getting things done. Youtube was kicking their ass. So they bought Youtube,
and it's continued to explode.

In their hearts, I have to believe that Google still wants to make that work.
They've flirted with this a few times; Startrek/etc are on Youtube, and Google
Video still has premium content.

Adding Hulu into the mix would give them the content/partner deals to run 1st-
run, major studio content on their platform.

They could segment; Leave Youtube for viral/crowd/user videos, and Hulu for
more "professional" videos.

Google Video, and Google.com would shows results from both when you video
search.

It'd be brilliant.

Edit- Clarified wording.

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gte910h
The issue is: Whenever you do a buy like this, all the customers of the
service get to jump ship if they want to.

So you don't necessarily get the network contracts by buying them.

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wtracy
Depends on what contracts they've signed, what their termination clauses are,
and when they expire.

Most likely, the networks do have contracts such that they can jump ship at
will.

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gte910h
I'm guessing it's not "at will" with no penalty but "in the event of ownership
changes, non-payment, or with X noticed for the payment of Y liquidated
damages', with Y being really large (and you can tell from the announcements
that have come out of hulu the contracts have terms).

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hammock
This would basically amount to Google paying for Hulu to be shut down. Who
would buy Hulu? We know that its backers - NBCU (Comcast/GE), Fox (News Corp),
and Disney/ABC - are not making as nearly as much money off of it as they want
to. As a result, if they sell it off they are unlikely to support their
content being on there even with the fees, since the fees Hulu is able to
generate are not adequate.

The only reason I can see that Google would be interested in Hulu would be
because it competes with Youtube. Because as soon as Hulu loses its media
backers it appears doomed to go straight into the ground.

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hristov
You make a good point. However we do not know what is happening in the
negotiations.

This is what I would do if I were Google. I would say to the media companies,
that I need license deals for at least one or two more years in order to buy
Hulu. The media companies would probably give those in order to be able to
book a nice profit on Hulu. Then during those one or two years, I would work
to cut the media companies out. I.e., I would make deals directly with
producers to bring new TV shows to Hulu before they even get on TV.

Every year there are dozens or maybe even hundreds of shows that get pitched
to the TV companies and most of them get rejected. I am sure there are plenty
of good ones among them. Google has enough money to pick up some of those
shows and to keep Hulu interesting.

Hulu is valuable not only because of their content deals (which are about to
expire) but because it has trained millions of people to go there to watch TV.
Google can take advantage of this and swoop in and cut out the middle man by
making deals directly with the content producers. This is somewhat similar to
what CD baby did for music.

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gscott
Then after the shows run on Hulu they can be sold to networks to on television
with the statistics behind each show that they are popular.

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nextparadigms
I think it would be a very good fit with them. But they need to make sure they
won't get screwed by the networks later, when they won't care what happens to
Hulu once they've sold it. Their incentive might be to kill it so they keep
making money from normal advertising, rather than Hulu's online advertising.

But this is also an opportunity to strengthen their relationship with them,
and get them to support Google TV.

EDIT: They can also do a lot of cool stuff to it, like integrating Google+
with it, for social viewing. Imagine Hangouts with Hulu...

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hebejebelus
WRT your edit: This reminds me of a service idea I had a while back which I
shelved for far too many reasons: A site/chatroom-esque thing where you can
invite people to watch things with you over the net (inspired by my long-
distance relationship at the time). I'd originally thought of Megavideo, but
youtube movies was even better (read: more legal). Advertising would have been
fairly well-targeted, judging by the video these people were watching. Free
idea, anyone?

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tartuffe78
The Colbert Report (via colbertnation.com) had/has something like this. It
prompted me to try it when I was watching an episode, basically you wait for a
room to fill up with people, then it plays to all of you while you chat.
Obviously you can't pause, which bothered me as I am usually doing two things
at once while watching something online

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3am
Remember Google Fiber for Communities when you read this. I would be very
concerned if I was a cable company. Google would probably be happy enough to
give a la carte TV via Hulu and high speed internet for little/no profit as
another ad platform.

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chc
Assuming they can get the content. That's a big assumption to make just as the
content companies are giving up on Hulu.

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MatthewPhillips
Don't most content deals have a clause that invalidates them in case the
company gets sold? Don't the networks hate Google (see Google TV as an attempt
to get their content on televisions for free)? Doesn't Google already own a
video streaming company?

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danjones
"Two of the media companies behind the online video service, Walt Disney Co.
and News Corp., recently renewed licensing agreements to make Hulu more
attractive for a sale." Providing the other networks will follow suite this
looks to be a great opportunity, though I do wonder how it will play in with
their services

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jimbobob
They already have the three major networks. NBC/Universal (Comcast) is
obligated to provide the same thing as the other partners due to the Justice
Dept's rules regarding the takeover.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/18/comcast-nbc-merger-the-
hulu...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/18/comcast-nbc-merger-the-hulu-rules/)

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protomyth
I guess the could transition Hulu into a pure subscription platform and use
youtube as the ad supported platform. Move premium Youtube content over to
Hulu and integrate search so Hulu results show in Google.

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ben1040
I assume that if this is true, this would be evidence of them putting a lot of
money on the "re-launch" of Google TV.

Google TV was a bomb for me when the cool unified streaming TV search feature
didn't actually work in reality, because Hulu blocked it.

Buying them out and integrating it is one way to solve that problem.

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drivingmenuts
Well, it's certainly not for their crap content or the ads Hulu shows despite
being a paid service.

Do they have enough customers to matter anymore? It's not like the goodwill of
media companies is worth anything.

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gte910h
Lots of people still use it, are you sure adoption is going down?

Hulu+ is pretty popular in my circles.

