Yahoo approaches Hulu about possible acquisition | Hacker News Reader

Yahoo approaches Hulu about possible acquisition

latimesblogs.latimes.com

22 pointsvarworld27 comments

This is really quite sad. In 1999, Yahoo bought the streaming media company (not just video, but radio/sports/original content/etc) I worked for, broadcast.com. They then proceeded to slowly drive the property into the ground, to where now, there's so little of it left it's pathetic.

If they had really grasped on to what we were doing back then, and ran with it, Yahoo would have come out ahead of YouTube, Google Video, and, I could imagine, many of the current streaming radio players out there now (lastfm, rdio, etc).

But that didn't happen. They silently killed off what they spent so much on to buy.

This really seems like a theme for Yahoo!. Delicious comes to mind as another example.

No, they would not have. Nothing Broadcast.com did offered any advantage in creating something like YouTube.

Broadcast.com was almost 10 years ahead of its time and probably would not have survived on its own. Yahoo made one of the worst acquisitions in history and then did the smart thing by cutting their losses.

Until around 2005 (when Flash Player 7 implemented progressive streaming) there was no good way to stream video on the internet and not enough users with broadband to build a big business around it.

YouTube was created at exactly the right moment, by a startup, which is how it would have happened regardless of what Yahoo did.

Nothing Broadcast.com did offered any advantage in creating something like YouTube.

This isn't totally correct. Nothing that we did back then, that was exposed to the public, would have offered an advantage for making a YouTube. We had built a system for Yahoo Personals to upload and stream videos, but this functionality was never really released to the public at large. I don't believe it had a big uptake in Personals so it was placed on the back burner.

We had the tools and systems in place to allow something like youtube, but it never saw the (public) light of day.

But, yes, you could be correct in that it would have just been at the wrong time. Who knows.

4 paragraphs:

1a) i dont know, but I'm sure some of these other points aren't right

1b) true, in the official product offering, but scaffolding was there

2a) false and true (thanks to burn rate and earlier assertion being false)

2b) true (price required plan not supported after purchase) and true

3a) false (multibitrate Windows Media was fantastic with a great video and audio codec, while Flash was plain bad till H.264), and in the years you say there wasn't demand, we built a similar business that routinely helped customers reach hundreds of thousands or even millions of viewers at a profit for them and a profit for us.

4a) YouTube (non-essential/comedy/ugc content being perfect for a ubiquitous animation player supporting a crappy codec via pseudostreaming) isn't Hulu, and isn't Broadcast.com. Hulu secured content users want to pay for.

Yahoo needs users' attention.

You could browse the web on a mobile phone before the iPhone too...

Windows Media was horrible from a end-user UX perspective (not well integrated into browsers, differences across OSes/browsers, version/codec issues) and required special server software.

RTMP streaming over Flash Communication Server was great on end-user UX but still required special server software.

Real Video/QuickTime sucked on both sides.

There's a world of difference between something being technically possible and being good enough to cause widespread adoption.

There were many streaming businesses that saw small scale success (like Broadcast.com) before Flash 7 was released. Just like there were some fairly successful business built selling Java games on flip phones.

Is Hulu even an acquisition target at any reasonable price? I always felt the media co backers of Hulu(Viacom, Time Warner etc.) want to keep it independent and use it more to progress their corporate cause than make a return by selling Hulu.

I'd put Hulu as one of the least likely companies to be acquired.

I haven't really loved Hulu, in fact just today I canceled my premium free trial with them... but they don't deserve that! Nobody deserves death-by-acquisition-by-Yahoo.

I read the title and half expected an article about Yahoo! asking Hulu to save them.

That was the first thing that crossed my mind when I saw the article. Yahoo. . . buying something huge? Is the world ending?

This can only end badly with AOL acquiring Hulu and running 10+ minutes of ads per 23 min show.

Yes I realize this is about Yahoo but I don't think they can afford it.

Does anyone else think Hulu would be a good acquisition for Google, especially now that they have Google TV? It would've been better if they bought Netflix a while ago, but Hulu seems to be like the next best thing. Plus, it's based on ads and everything.

It would make a lot more sense from a revenue standpoint than when they purchased YouTube. Viacom has beef with Google TV so I wonder what would happen to all the Viacom offerings on Hulu if that were to happen.

http://www.gtvhub.com/2010/11/21/comedy-central-mtv-nickelod...

it doesn't really make a lot of sense to me. youtube is perfectly capable of negotiating for contracts with content owners, they don't need another property to do that.

the reason most TV shows aren't on youtube is not because the content owners don't like youtube, it's because the content owners and google can't agree on acceptable terms. buying hulu won't change that.

The second Google purchases Hulu, the site's content licenses will be revoked by All the providers and they'll demand a renegotiation of far more favorible deal.

Hulu was only able to stay afloat because it was backed by FOX NBC and Disney, and got all those shows at a heavily discounted price. The networks were very cautious to not create an iTunes for TV that would grow to be too big to control, they use very restrictive and short term content license to ensure that.

It seems like Yahoo has decided to bet on their Connected TV brand, with this bid for hulu and recent acquisition of IntoNow makes it pretty clear. This may be a better direction for their display ad business instead of generic internet services.

Yahoo simply isn't going to be able to buy themselves out of the hole they've made. Honestly, I'd be surprised if they could muster an offer that Hulu would find appealing.

Well, Hulu comes pre-neglected, so it will fit right in to Yahoo's portfolio management.

I personally think Yahoo is Corporate greed at its highest. Nothing good has come from Yahoo management and higher ups. The only good that has come have been from developers. To me personally, I think Yahoo is all about money now. Hulu would make another target to rake in profits and then dismiss or run into the ground like other commentors.

As a talent acquisition to get a hold of Jason Kilar, CEO of Hulu, I'd love to see this happen.

Kilar gets online media, gets working with the content providers, gets ad driven content businesses.

What did Yahoo do with Stewart Butterfield?

Look back through "talent" buys... They tend to leave Yahoo more quickly than other buyers like Microsoft or Google.

Am I the only one who doesn't understand why Yahoo is even still around? Since at least three years I have only heard about Yahoo products because they were canceled.

Can we have it the other way around?

Hulu to buy Yahoo? Impressive.

If Yahoo acquires Hulu, does that mean it will come to Canada? Pleasee!!!

I'm in Toronto and watch Hulu/Netflix US all the time. You need a VPN service. StrongVPN is $7/month. Worth it if you're exploring cutting the cable from Rogers/Bell/Telus.

If you have a server in the US (any very cheap hosting--I think even shared hosting--should work), you can also just do SSH tunneling.

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