Google and Hulu Courting on Marriage for Google TV

written by: Richard Kastelein

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Published on Friday, 08 October 2010 08:42

During the Logitech reveal of their advanced remote and the Google TV held yesterday, Logitech's Junien Labrousse responded to a question about possible Hulu integration in Google TV  by saying that while Hulu is now actually blocking the box, Google and Hulu are currently in talks about bringing the service to Google TV.

According to a report from TFTS - this is a win-win no brainer.

Of course Hulu are not averse to partnering with hardware vendors in order to bring its streaming service to more end users – Hulu is already available via TiVo Premiere and Roku, for example – but, crucially, these products only offer access for Hulu Plus subscribers and don’t offer up free Hulu content so its reasonable to assume that this may also be the case should a Hulu and Google partnership transpired and Hulu makes its way to those availing themselves of Google TV.

At present, however, as matters concerning a Hulu / Google partnership are pretty scant – neither company are offering any insight as to the current state of play in their negotiations – your guess is as good as ours though we’d be surprised if free Hulu streaming content makes Google TV though not in the least surprised if Hulu Plus makes an appearance. After all let’s be honest here, such a tie up would be pretty beneficial to both parties with Hulu having access to a wider customer base whilst Google can mark up yet more content that’s available via their net connected TV service.

In replying in the comments section to Matt Cunningham at Endgadget, the Monarch noted:

And Hulu was created as a knee-jerk reaction to the TV/film industry's terror of increasing piracy and decreasing eyeballs for their traditional channels. It's a bastard child, to be sure, without a clear, sustaining revenue model, but the studios at least were determined to not sit on their hands once the genie was out (like the music industry did).

There are no easy answers to the problem of the studios getting paid for their content. Web doesn't scale enough and there is less tolerance for ad breaks. And people don't want to pay over and above what they are giving for cable, but as more and more DVR's penetrate the market there is more ad skipping. It is quickly becoming untenable for broadcasters to keep up with the old model, and once the boomers start passing on and today's teens become the middle-aged consumers to chase there will be a sea change in the broadcast model. What will that shape up to be?

If I knew I would know who to be courting for my next job.