Hulu's fantastic suicide

Hulu announced today that they're pulling the plug on support for Boxee effective this Friday. Boxee is a free, cross-platform media center application with social networking features. The legendary Boxee hack for the AppleTV turned Apple's "hobby" into a compelling media center.

In a blog post Hulu CEO Jason Kilar sticks a knife into the heart of Boxee fans everywhere:

Later this week, Hulu's content will no longer be available through Boxee... Our content providers requested that we turn off access to our content via the Boxee product, and we are respecting their wishes.

Boxee CEO Aver Ronen replied in kind:

we tried (many times) to plead the case for keeping Hulu on boxee, but on Friday of this week, in good faith, we will be removing it...

our goal has always been to drive users to legal sources of content that are publicly available on the Internet. we have many content partners who are generating revenue from boxee users and we will work with Hulu and their partners to resolve the situation as quickly as possible.

Hulu is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp, and it shows. The old guard media companies just doesn't get it. What's next? Maybe Hulu will announce that all its shows are being pulled of the Internet and being sold only on 5-inch plastics discs?

Damn aliens. Never trust 'em.