After months of speculation and rumors, premium online video service Hulu is no longer for sale, the company announced on its blog. Hulu will continue to be owned jointly by News Corporation, the Walt Disney Company, Comcast and Providence Equity Partners for the time being.
The announcement comes after bids from several big tech companies evidently failed to pique the interest of Hulu’s current owners. In July, we wrote about why Amazon would make an ideal owner for the service and fold it into its Prime video offerings. Other serious contenders included Yahoo, Dish and Google.
Google seemed like an increasingly likely new owner for Hulu when it reportedly made a offer that was “a couple billion dollars more” than any of the other companies involved in the bidding. The search giant is said to have offered more money in exchange for content licensing deals that were longer than what Hulu was originally offering.
For Google, the purchase could have helped the company shore up its digital video properties, something thats crucial to its future advertising revenue, as well as to the survival of Google TV, which has been met by a lukewarm reaction by consumers so far.
Alas, it was not meant to be. Without offering a shred of detail, the company’s owners have pulled off its “for sale” sign, at least for the foreseeable future.
