Why Google Wants to Buy Hulu | Hacker News Reader

Why Google Wants to Buy Hulu

gettingmoreawesome.com

12 pointsrishi7 comments

Hulu's a very dangerous commodity for whoever buys them. Once sold away by NBC, Fox, and Disney, they'll also lose the exclusive contracts they have with those networks, in which case the only real service they're providing is ad-sourcing. Fox et al were trying to hike up Hulu's content licensing rates dramatically before selling them was even a discussion. No way Hulu will keep the same advantaged deals after a split.

Makes sense for Google just like DoubleClick did, but Hulu's platform is in jeopardy.

Hulu needs a new revenue, and subscription model. I canceled my paid subscription because I got tired of looking at ad's (constantly interrupting) in stream. What's the point of a paid subscription?

If I'm going to put myself through a scheduled annoyance I might as well go to cable/Dish. At least with them I'm not stuck with limited content.

Possible solution: They can just go Justin.tv on everyone and start encouraging (I mean discouraging :p) copyrighted material.

> Possible solution: They can just go Justin.tv on everyone and start encouraging (I mean discouraging :p) copyrighted material.

Just about everything (if not everything) on Hulu is copyrighted. There is no user generated content aside from comments and ratings.

Yes but their copyrights are shrinking by the day. Most of the good programs have already been taken off Hulu because Networks like Fox, CBS, HBO have realized they can stream the content themselves. What do they need Hulu for?

I would argue that the program offered by Hulu are still growing. Probably rapidly too. Hulu is owned by NBC, Fox, and Disney after all so will have a much easier time acquiring rights to stream then Google ever will. If the rumor that Google is trying to lock in 10 year access rights is correct then Google will significantly increase the available shows offered on YouTube.

This is the hard nut "I canceled my paid subscription because I got tired of looking at ad's".

It is interesting that NetFlix traffic started exceeding torrent and p2p traffic, it will be more interesting if the price hike at Netflix reverses that trend.

Many people don't think that they are 'paying' for something when they sit through and advertisement, and yet they don't sit through it when there are 'too many' ads. Economically that transaction is identical. If you consider ad tolerance as the currency, you 'raise' the price by putting in more ads (which does raise the income of the content provider) but that drives away people (reduces demand) when people are ad saturated. Lower the number of ads, get more people. Since you can't always make enough to run a business, there is the advertisement + subscription which is two currencies vs just ads.

Another HN comment talked about the need to disrupt the movies, this is the same for TV.

Let me get this straight. Hulu's breakthrough here is providing choice to the user? Online advertising has been out for over a decade, and the killer app here is enabled by giving the user an option of which commercial to suffer through? Do marketers never think about the user experience?

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