Hulu, the online video streaming service, is said to be at the top of many companies wish lists these days, with TV operators like DirecTV and Time Warner Cable; private equity firms KKR, Guggenheim Digital, The Chernin Group, and Silverlake Partners, and talent agency William Morris Endeavor all said to be interested in buying it.  However, these interested parties could all be blown away if there’s any truth to the rumors that there’s a new bidder on the block – with none other than big-spending Yahoo said to have Hulu set firmly within its sights.

According to AllThingsD’s sources, Yahoo is willing to spend anything from $600 to $800 million to acquire Hulu. The source adds that the asking price is dependent on “the length of the licensing rights for Hulu’s content and how much control the programming companies selling Hulu have over their media.”

This isn’t the first time the streaming service has looked for new owners.  Currently, Hulu is part-owned by News Corp, Disney and Comcast, who reportedly tried to sell the service to Google not so long ago. The search engine giant was said to be the highest bidder from a number of interested parties, offering something in the range of $1.5 billion to $2 billion. The deal never materialized because Google was said to be “looking for major assurances in terms of Hulu’s content licenses, something that News Corp and Disney were unwilling to give.”

Sources state that the person leading the Hulu bid is Los Angeles-based Ian Weingarten, VP of corporate development, who works for M&A head Jackie Reses.

Yahoo reportedly wants to bolster its online video content, and sees buying Hulu as the easiest way of catching up with Google, which successfully beat it to acquire YouTube several years ago. Appearing on today’s NewsDesk show, SiliconANGLE’s contributing editor John Casaretto discussed a number of ways in which Yahoo could successfully monetize Hulu and reinvigorate it’s struggling businesses:

“They continue to seek that buzz, to really build out the base of the product, build that growth that they’re certainly looking for,” states Casaretto. “She’s [Mayer] been quoted as saying that Tumblr will instantly boost Yahoo’s user base by some 50 percent, up to one billion, web traffic by 20 percent, and whether that equals more value for Yahoo really depends on their vision and their execution.”

“Tumblr wasn’t exactly a perfect fit, to say the least, but it really depends on their plan and how they’ll execute that, and I really think that’s a part of their planning and why they’re going about this,” Casaretto adds.

With all these acquisitions being made, some are questioning as to whether there’s a chance that this would put Yahoo in the Red Zone financially, but Casaretto explained that before Yahoo went on a shopping spree the company had $4 billion in cash lying around which means the company has money to spend and it’s putting it to good use by acquiring other companies that could complement or improve its existing products and services.

For more of Casaretto’s Breaking Analysis, check out the NewsDesk video:

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is not solely focused on Hulu however, as she’s still figuring out how to better incorporate Tumblr, its recently acquired blogging service, with its other products and services.  Also, there’s news that Yahoo is eyeing “at least two other significant purchases — in the $150 million to $200 million range — each for a mobile and a communications company.”