Rien ne va plus! Bidding On Hulu Is Closing!

Rien ne va plus! The bidding for Hulu, the leading premium video content platform, owned by NBC Universal, News Corp, Disney Company, and Providence Equity is almost closed. Who will buy Hulu? Will it be Google, Apple, Yahoo or Amazon?

Hulu is available to US users only. But the platform offers TV shows, premium and streaming online video content. You can read more about Hulu (and Netflix) in our very recent article.

comScore is showing us around Hulu that 178 million US users watched online video content in June 2011, for an average of 16.8 hours per user.

It’s expected that the bids will range from $500 million to $2 billion, depending on what licensing deals are included in the acquisition.

The Wall Street Journal has indicated that Google is officially part of the bidding war that will close this week.

With YouTube’s hunt for premium content and profit, and the failing Google TV, we understand that Google is serious about bidding.

But Google has just spent $12.5 billion on the Motorola acquisition, mainly to own Moto’s 24,000 patents.

For Google, the licensing is the biggest selling point; it would allow them to push YouTube further along and would give them an additional video-based revenue source to boot.

Maybe the combination YouTube and Hulu will bring Google’s video business from perish to profit?

Yahoo, that has lost the battle for search engine advertising revenues from Google, is focusing on entertainment, video and TV news and would thus be an intuitive buyer. As a top display and video ad company, Yahoo also has a lot to gain from the additional high-visibility web space.

Other potential but silent bidders could include Apple, DirectTV, Microsoft and eCommerce giant Amazon.

If we shouted Rien ne va plus now, on what potential bidder would you put your money? Who will be the proud new owner of Hulu?

Sources: The Wall Street Journal, comScore, Search Engine Journal.