After video-streaming site Hulu put itself up for sale last month, six companies including Google, Yahoo! and Amazon reportedly have submitted their initial bids. Yahoo!, whose interest first led Hulu to consider a sale, remains an eager bidder, but the Sunnyvale-headquartered corporation could be outbid by Google or Amazon.
Rather surprisingly, however, none of them emerged as the highest bidder.
According to Business Insider, the highest bidder is Dish Network, who beats out both Amazon and Yahoo! with its $1.9 billion offer. The satellite TV company might have been willing to outbid the competition because it is interested in Hulu’s back-end technology as well as the content of the online video service site.
Technically, though, Google submitted the highest bid by a large margin, which was “something in the range of $4 billion,” but that offer is believed to come with special conditions (according to rumor, Larry Page personally flew down to Los Angeles to discuss the terms).
Hulu’s owners – which include Fox, Disney‘s ABC, and Comcast‘s NBCUniversal – were hoping for a better offer, and Business Insider revealed that they were disappointed that no one offered more than $2 billion under their conditions. The owners are still in the process of deciding what to do and will likely go with Google or Dish, or maybe even decide not to sell at all.
