You make a good point. However we do not know what is happening in the negotiations. This is what I would do if I were Google. I would say to the media compani

You make a good point. However we do not know what is happening in the negotiations. This is what I would do if I were Google. I would say to the media companies, that I need license deals for at least one or two more years in order to buy Hulu. The media companies would probably give those in order to be able to book a nice profit on Hulu. Then during those one or two years, I would work to cut the media companies out. I.e., I would make deals directly with producers to bring new TV shows to Hulu before they even get on TV. Every year there are dozens or maybe even hundreds of shows that get pitched to the TV companies and most of them get rejected. I am sure there are plenty of good ones among them. Google has enough money to pick up some of those shows and to keep Hulu interesting. Hulu is valuable not only because of their content deals (which are about to expire) but because it has trained millions of people to go there to watch TV. Google can take advantage of this and swoop in and cut out the middle man by making deals directly with the content producers. This is somewhat similar to what CD baby did for music.