Early hints have been good for Hulu as the biggies in the web world have been showing interests on bid for them, but the list just got heavier as the news broke out that Google is on its way to place a bid for Hulu. This can change the history of the bidding list as the search engine giant has allegedly offered a bid for a larger-scale purchase. The earlier top competitors were Yahoo, Amazon, and the Dish Network.
Google’s bid might be strange, but not really surprising as it can still be expected that Google would be placing their bid on many more factors rather than just concentrating on what Hulu is offering to sell. Apparently, the bidding from Google can be over-arching as it would aim for the extras too, which might be like further licensing, which would validate their exclusive bidding offer.
It is yet again not surprising that with a much bigger amount on the offering from Google, Hulu’s owners are tempted to consider this even as an option. This may be a big turnaround for the bidding actually as the owners of Hulu might just kill all their long-time efforts to keep licensing secure and provide a buffer against a YouTube takeover.
However, till there is an official announcement from either parties, there would be only assumptions as to what would the offer amount be and what would be on the search engine giant’s requirement list.
Google has always merged their ambition and audacity before making a move, especially when they are buying in something and this move here looks quite accurate as per the reputation Google has maintained for the acquisitions. This buyout will again just add into the trending big purchase list of the company.
Talking about what would Google offer, there is no confusion that the price would be really exclusive and Google would not be afraid of shelling out a bit more to get the licensing even if the option is considered by the executives of Hulu. Google in the past had shelled out $1.65 billion in 2006 to buy YouTube and recently even they spent a whooping $12.5 billion to buy Motorola last month.
For Google, it seems now the antitrust investigations would not really affect Google and the purchasing trend of Google would only move upwards in the leadership of their new CEO Larry Page.
For a background to Hulu’s story, Hulu is currently owned by NBCUniversal, Fox Entertainment Group, Disney-ABC, and Providence Equity Partners. For the bidders, there is no doubt that Yahoo was in the top running to buy the Hulu offering, as they were the first company who approached Hulu. Then it might have even clicked on Hulu as the owners opened the bidding floor wide for everyone, which even had their space reserved for speculation and rumors.
Of course they might not intend to sell it off, but surely they want to pass on the burden of handling the company’s service for a restricted number of years. The licensing deal on offer was to sell out for two years. They however closed the bidding in late August and the range which was disclosed by the people familiar with the matter, was in the range of $1.5 billion to $2 billion with one notable exception.