Enjoy:

Whatever side you come down on after this week of they-are-definitely-watching revelations, this little scientific experiment with table salt and a metal plate is very lovely to watch, and gives you some idea that there is order in the universe of a more magical kind.

Enjoy:

According to sources close to the telecommunications giant, AT&T is in discussions with the Chernin Group about mounting a joint bid to acquire the Hulu premium video site.

It makes sense — in addition to its core phone business, AT&T also sells broadband and TV via its U-verse service. And, while well-funded, Chernin certainly could use the extra financial firepower in the multi-player competition to buy Hulu.

Sources close the the owners have speculated recently that they expected more joint efforts in the sale of the unit, which is owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast.

Already, several major players from various sides have expressed interest in Hulu since its trio of media owners decided to put it back on the block. Among the bidders: Yahoo, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, Guggenheim Partners, as well the Chernin Group.

The investment and media company is run by former News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, who was integral to the founding of Hulu and had intimate knowledge of how it operates. While his initial bid was in the lower $500 million range, sources familiar with the situation said it is likely to be higher as the auction for the site evolves.

Currently, all bids are non-binding, but Hulu is now winnowing them out in order to move to the next and more serious level of sale.

That said, sources also cautioned that it could turn out that no sale happens if the bids do not come in at levels about $1 billion.

I always like to listen to the dulcet tones of Yahoo CFO Ken Goldman, especially when he talks about what’s next for Yahoo.

That’s because the last time he appeared at an investor conference, the Boston-accented exec zeroed into the need for the Silicon Valley Internet giant to aim at a younger demographic.

Soon enough, Yahoo had scooped up one of the Internet’s most obvious youth plays, Tumblr, for $1.1 billion in cash.

That’s why I tuned in tonight to listen to a replay of his appearance at a tech investor conference held by Bank of America/Merrill Lynch yesterday in San Francisco, where Goldman did not disappoint in delivering some interesting tea leaves to read.

And what struck me most were his words around the continued interest Yahoo has in mobile, including possible acquisitions.

While he again talked in general about how Yahoo was no longer the M&A anathema it had been before the arrival of CEO Marissa Mayer — “companies did not necessarily want to be acquired by Yahoo” — he firmly noted that “now when find something interesting, we actually go and address it and acquire it, rather than thinking about it.”

Goldman added that Yahoo would continue to do acquisitions, “to help basically accelerate our progress … and continue to see the velocity of products in the mobile space.”

Of most interest is “localization of the space,” especially in providing search and content to consumers.

Hey, Dennis Crowley of Foursquare, that sounds like you! Indeed, the famous local New York-based check-in service and its telegenic founder Crowley have always been a favorite of Mayer, including an interest in buying the company when she was an exec at Google, which never came to pass, for various reasons.

(In a coincidence, the founder of the famous local check-in company happened be in San Francisco yesterday, checking in last night at the Tempest Bar near Foursquare’s offices.)

As many worried about its prospects of late — its user base last year was only 30 million, although it powers location information for big sites like Instagram — Foursquare recently did a $41 million financing with help from the powerful Silver Lake private equity firm, which valued the company at $600 million. Other current investors who also participated in the transaction, which also included convertible debt, were Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures and Spark Capital.

While that seems to have staved off sales talk around Foursquare, it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that Yahoo would be contemplating a company just like it, as it continues to actively survey the landscape. That’s especially true given that Foursquare’s laudable but exhausting efforts to monetize need some serious turbocharging that Yahoo could certainly provide.

Much like Tumblr, Foursquare has struggled to realize its business aims — in its case, to make money from selling mobile advertising using its rich local search and robust user location information. (The company had about $2 million of revenue last year, according to a number of reports.)

Foursquare has certainly been inventive in its efforts, including a terrific “Game of Cones” campaign that somehow mashed up HBO’s hit cable show with ice cream (Winter is coming in summer, perhaps?).

While it’s just my humble opinion for now, advertising, search and content combined, of course, is directly in Yahoo’s wheelhouse, as well as Mayer’s.

Back to Goldman: “We’re not afraid to make any decisions,” he said, noting that Yahoo has a regular routine of reviewing a number of deals. “It comes back to what’s our strategy and focus and what do we need to accelerate our progress … we have to see a fit.”

In other tidbits, Goldman noted that Yahoo was working more “collaboratively” with its Chinese bank — oops, investment — Alibaba Group, which is preparing to go public at the end of this year, or early next year.

The huge pile of money Yahoo has made off its initial $1 billion investment by co-founder Jerry Yang has been what has given current management its comfy cushion to remake the company, and has also goosed its stock.

Regarding Alibaba’s IPO, after which Yahoo will be getting another multibillion-dollar slug of dough, Goldman added that “there are mechanisms in place to ensure it is a fair process to all parties.”

He noted, too, that he had joined the board of Yahoo’s other Asian investment, in Yahoo Japan, and would be at its next meeting. Yahoo has previously contemplated selling that asset, too, but has seemed to have tabled that effort under Goldman and Mayer.

You can listen to Goldman’s talk at the investor conference in its entirety here.

Bloomberg is launching Bloomberg Beta, a new $75 million venture capital tech fund that will be headed by former IGN head Roy Bahat.

The newly minted VC is charged with investing in and also creating early-stage startups for the media and financial news giant.

“Set up as a true fund, Bloomberg Beta will invest for financial return, selecting companies independently of their current or future business relationship with Bloomberg L.P.,” said the company in a press release.

The independent fund — with Bloomberg as the only limited partner — will initially focus on data, technology platforms, content discovery, media distribution, as well as networks and communities, human-computer interaction and “radically new organizational models.”

I am not sure exactly what that is, but the longtime tech exec Bahat — he is also chairman of Ouya, along with his stint running the News Corp.-owned gaming network — has already invested in a range of companies, including Newsle, MkII, Nodejitsu, Codecademy, Errplane and ProsperWorks.

Other Bloomberg Beta partners include Karin Klein, who was an exec at Bloomberg; and James Cham, who comes to the fund from Trinity Ventures.

Bloomberg has had some experience in investing, having backed an internal effort, Bloomberg Ventures, which is no longer in operation.

After it announced layoffs of 520 employees and lowered its guidance to Wall Street, Zynga’s stock dropped precipitously yesterday, down 12 percent, to dip below $3 a share.

The decline put the market value of the company at just $2.34 billion, well below the once much-hyped hopes for the San Francisco-based online gaming company that has seen nothing but troubled times since its IPO. In fact, since its late 2011 public offering, Zynga shares are down close to 70 percent.

But perhaps more interesting is that, with $1.6 billion in cash and marketable securities, investors now consider the company to be worth just below $750 million.

In other words, about $350 million less than Yahoo just paid for the blogging platform Tumblr, which has substantively less revenue than Zynga.

That small valuation puts the company in an interesting position, as it seeks to move its business more quickly into the mobile space, as its Web-based business has fallen off more dramatically than expected. Simply put, mobile monetizes less robustly than Zynga’s Web offerings.

The slowness in moving its casual social games to fast-growing new devices, such as tablets and smartphones, has been at the heart of Zynga’s current troubles, forcing management to cut its staff by 18 percent in order to rationalize costs.

ZNGA data by YCharts

That has meant the slashing of its staff of more than 3,000 — which grew quickly via a series of acquisitions made in recent years — and closing offices in New York and Los Angeles to save money.

What happens next will be the subject of much speculation, given its declining worth, including whether Zynga might consider going private or if some other company might contemplate acquiring it.

Most sources close to the company think it is unlikely that its big owners, including venture firm Kleiner Perkins, will want to conduct any kind of dramatic transaction, given Zynga’s currently prone state. Said one person close to the situation, its eventual state will depend on how well the company manages to turn itself around.

Here’s the tough-to-write blog post that Zynga CEO Mark Pincus just put up and also sent to the San Francisco gaming giant’s staff. The company just announced layoffs of 18 percent of the company and also lowered its second-quarter guidance.

In it, Pincus, the founder of what was once a rocket ship of a startup in Silicon Valley, appropriately began on a somber note:

“Today is a hard day for Zynga and an emotional one for every employee of our company … None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth.”

Indeed, the fall has been fast and hard for Zynga, as it struggles to cope with a massive consumer migration to mobile that happened faster than its management — or, to be fair, anyone in the Internet business — could cope with. Until now, its fast growth has been based on its Web business and flagship franchises such as FarmVille.

But, as several sources noted and Pincus addressed in this note, Zynga must now get smaller again to get larger, doing little things really well rather than a lot of things at scale.

“The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played,” he wrote.

Zynga had made smaller cuts of five percent last fall, but the fall-off of its Web business — especially on the Facebook platform — was faster than anticipated, sources said.

That business has, as one person close to the situation noted, been “brittle,” and it broke more easily than expected.

That is not to say there has not been some promise, in games such as Running With Friends and even at its flagship FarmVille, which is still a strong title. And Zynga now has 65 million mobile users.

Pincus had been signaling more changes to come of late, trying to keep the company cash-flow positive, as he sought to rationalize costs.

In the company’s last earnings call, he stressed that 2013 would be “transitional” for Zynga and has rejiggered its top management to better focus the efforts on mobile.

Sources said that severance benefits will extend for several months and include some acceleration of stock options.

Still, it is not a pretty day for Pincus, or for the staff of Zynga, showing a lot of hard-charging entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley the very steep downside of being a public company CEO in a tough and fast-changing environment.

Here’s the full Pincus post and memo:

To our Zynga Community,

Today is a hard day for Zynga and an emotional one for every employee of our company. We are saying painful goodbyes to about 18% of our Zynga brothers and sisters. The impact of these layoffs will be felt across every group in the company.

None of us ever expected to face a day like today, especially when so much of our culture has been about growth. But I think we all know this is necessary to move forward. The scale that served us so well in building and delivering the leading social gaming service on the Web is now making it hard to successfully lead across mobile and multiplatform, which is where social games are going to be played.

These moves, while hard to face today, represent a proactive commitment to our mission of connecting the world through games. Mobile and touch screens are revolutionizing gaming. Our opportunity is to make mobile gaming truly social by offering people new, fun ways to meet, play and connect. By reducing our cost structure today we will offer our teams the runway they need to take risks and develop these breakthrough new social experiences.

Because we’re making these moves proactively and from a position of financial strength, we can take care of laid off employees. We’re offering generous severance packages that reflect our appreciation for all of their work and we hope this will provide a foundation as they pursue their next professional steps.

Although these are hard decisions, I’m confident that our strategy of building leading franchises and supporting them with the largest network is the right one for the long term. I’m encouraged by our recent progress. Running With Friends is a great example of the quality player experience we can deliver, already receiving an average 4.5 app star rating from 22,000 players in less than one month after launching. Our FarmVille franchise teams continue to innovate and deliver ground breaking new social experiences like County Fair which, despite only being available on the web, is engaging 39 million monthly players.

I want to thank every one of you for the spirit, creativity and energy that you’ve invested in Zynga. You’ve reintroduced a generation of people to gaming and through these games offered them new ways to connect with their families, make new friends and even sometimes find love.

Everyone will be affected by these changes and I’m sure there will be many follow up questions to this email. If you have specific questions relating to your project or team, please talk to your manager. For any other feedback or thoughts feel free to email me directly.

Mark

Zynga confirmed it was laying off 18 percent of its workforce — which represents 520 employees — in a bid to reduce costs, as it seeks to drastically restructure its troubled business.

The move today will affect every part of the San Francisco social gaming company, cutting $80 million in staff costs for its 2,900 current workers. It will also include the closing of its offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, as well as other infrastructure costs, adding to the total expense reduction.

Zynga continues to have big offices in San Francisco; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India, as well as several small units across the U.S. (such as Seattle and San Diego).

Sources said that severance benefits will extend for several months and include some acceleration of stock options.

In addition, Zynga has now said in a press release that it is downgrading its investor guidance for the second quarter with results at the lower end of what Wall Street has been expecting.

After a rocky IPO and trying to cope with rapid changes in its core businesses, Zynga has been trying to refocus the company’s franchises and network on the shift to mobile and a narrowing of focus at the company.

That refocusing will now have a big impact on Zynga’s financial performance. For Q2, the company had previously said its “bookings” — related to sales of in-game virtual-good purchases and advertising — would be in the $180 million to $190 million range. Today, Zynga said results would now be in the lower half of that range.

In addition, its GAAP net loss for the quarter will be higher than expected, rising from a loss of $26.5 million to $36.5 million to a loss of between $28.5 million and $39 million.

All other metrics are expected to remain the same, including: Revenue ($225 million to $235 million); earnings per share (a loss of three to five cents); adjusted EBITDA (break even to a loss of $10 millon); and non-GAAP EPS (a loss of three to four cents).

Wall Street is not reacting well to the bad news. Zynga’s shares have dropped from 11 to 12 percent since AllThingsD.com broke the news of the layoffs. It is now at about $3 a share, giving the company a market valuation of $2.4 billion. Trading for Zynga was briefly halted, before the company confirmed the cost cuts.

Zynga is laying off 18 percent of its workforce — which represents 520 employees — in a bid to reduce costs and more drastically restructure its troubled business toward mobile, according to sources close to the situation.

The move today will affect every part of the San Francisco social gaming company and cut $80 million in staff expenses. Zynga currently has about 2,900 workers.

But the action will also include the closing of its offices in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas, as well as the slashing of other major infrastructure costs, adding to a total reduction that is likely to be much larger.

Zynga continues to have big offices in San Francisco; Beijing, China; and Bangalore, India, as well as several small units across the U.S. (such as Seattle and San Diego).

Sources said that severance benefits will extend for several months and include some acceleration of stock options.

(Update: Zynga has halted trading on the Nasdaq stock market pending news.)

(Second update: Zynga confirmed layoffs and cost cuts, noting they will complete them by August.)

The reason? Mobile — a business Zynga must conquer, despite its currently smaller prospects for monetization compared to its Web business.

After a rocky IPO and trying to cope with rapid changes in its core businesses, Zynga now must refocus the company’s flagship franchises and network on the shift to mobile and a narrowing of focus at the company.

In other parlance, this is a “right-sizing” of Zynga to reflect a more somber reality that these mobile businesses are not as large as its Web-based one that rode the startup to glory on the explosive growth of social networks, primarily Facebook.

Sources said the reason for the more substantive cuts now, after earlier ones last fall, is because the decline of its Web business has been more drastic than anticipated, while the rise of its mobile business has been slower than needed. That’s been especially true on Facebook, which was once one of Zynga’s key money-making partners.

It has resulted in a perfect storm of trouble for Zynga, which has struggled with its business since its public offering, as investors have scrutinized the longevity of the hits-based online gaming business. Despite the continued strength of some of its big properties, such as FarmVille, the life cycle of most casual games has been short.

Zynga has tried to fix the situation by moving to the faster-growing mobile space. In addition, CEO and founder Mark Pincus has tried to solidify its top management, as well as bring in more board help, to strengthen efforts to revive the company.

Zynga has already been on the cost-cutting path, closing less successful games and other more ambitious products that had enjoyed less than expected traction. For example, the company has “sunsetted” 18 games in recent months, as it has deployed more resources and development to mobile efforts.

According to sources close to the situation, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is working on what is likely to turn into a significant restructuring of the massive software company, which could also move several current execs to more prominent roles.

Sources noted that the changes — which center on solidifying Microsoft into the “devices and services company” that Ballmer wrote about in his annual shareholder letter last October — are still being worked out, and could still change substantively.

But, noted several people close to the situation, the new configuration could include larger roles for several execs, including Satya Nadella, president of its Servers and Tools division; Tony Bates, president of its Skype communications division; and Don Mattrick, president of its Interactive Entertainment division.

How their new and perhaps expanded roles and those of others in top management will shake out is unclear.

What seems likely is an organizational structure that will focus on configuring Microsoft around devices and services, both in the enterprise and the consumer space, and simplifying its management. Currently, Microsoft has a rather convoluted set-up, with other major units such as Business Solutions, Online Services and Microsoft Office.

But how Microsoft’s flagship software product, Windows, fits into the new org is still under debate.

Wrote Ballmer about the changes for Microsoft last fall: “This is a significant shift, both in what we do and how we see ourselves — as a devices and services company. It impacts how we run the company, how we develop new experiences, and how we take products to market for both consumers and businesses.”

The possible restructuring comes amid increasing investor pressure on Microsoft and, interestingly, a recent run-up in its stock.

Nomura Equity Research analyst Rick Sherlund, who has covered the company since it went public, wrote last week that “there may be a shift in the wind upcoming for Microsoft, with shareholders potentially demanding a greater say in the direction of the company and how it might be run to drive a better return to shareholders.” In his note, Sherlund recommended that Microsoft consider selling off its Bing search business, as well as its Xbox gaming unit.

This focus on shareholder returns has again come into sharper relief since it was disclosed that ValueAct Capital had bought about 1 percent of Microsoft’s stock, and Sherlund noted that this stake could allow the hedge fund to push for change “with the support of others to advance their agenda for change.”

But unlike a more pugnacious previous effort to spur change at Microsoft by Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn, ValueAct’s Jeff Ubben has been more dulcet in his tone, noting that Microsoft’s strong software background and enterprise strength was key when combined with future trends, such as cloud computing.

“Microsoft could be the largest cloud company in the world,” Ubben said in a recent speech.

That’s an open question still, but investors are certainly warming to Microsoft, after a long period of weak stock performance. Interestingly, over the last six months, Microsoft shares have risen more than 31 percent, perhaps in anticipation of some change to come.

A Microsoft spokesman declined to comment.

One of the great pleasures of producing D is that every year the discussion is different, because the technology, Internet and media businesses are so dynamic. But, as we convene this, the 11th edition of our conference, the digital world is indisputably at an inflection point: The PC has peaked, and it’s all about post-PC mobile devices, software and services. That means smartphones and tablets, for now, with wearable devices coming on strong.

Our D speakers and attendees have been talking about this trend for years, long before Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone in January of 2007. But this year, we gather just about six weeks after the report of the worst quarterly decline in PC sales ever recorded, while sales of smartphones and tablets continue to surge. Android devices, which didn’t exist until late 2008, cover the earth, and Apple alone has sold more than 140 million tablets since April of 2010. And Samsung seems to be everywhere.

It’s no surprise, then, that everyone’s new slogan is “mobile first!”

This change has staggering implications for companies ranging from unknown software startups to the “Gang of Four” platform giants identified by Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt at D9 — Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google — and the giant he didn’t list, Microsoft.

What happens to huge companies like Dell and Hewlett-Packard that lack much of a post-PC or mobile presence? Can the company that kicked off the new era, Apple, maintain its reputation for innovation in the post-Jobs era under the onslaught of the Android juggernaut?

Can Google maintain control of its Android platform in the face of Samsung’s power and Amazon’s refusal to use Google’s apps? Can Facebook’s aggressive new mobile strategy succeed? Will Amazon do as well at phones and other devices as it appears to have done at tablets? And can Microsoft become the third big platform player with Windows 8 and Windows Phone? If not, does BlackBerry have a shot?

And more: Will wearable devices that go beyond fitness bands, such as Google Glass, be the next historic game-changers? Or will they remain niche products?

Most of all, how does the mobile surge and the wearable promise change user behavior, entertainment and productivity? What will be the impact on society?

Finally, given all these sweeping changes, can anybody other than a few big companies make real money in mobile?

We’ll discuss these questions and more with a stellar lineup of speakers, one that we’re especially proud to have sit in our signature red chairs this year.

Leading off will be Apple CEO Tim Cook, leader of arguably still the most influential tech giant, but one that faces the challenges of high expectations and its fiercest competition in years. Has Apple lost its cool, or is it just secretly readying its next big surprise to take the world by storm?

Apple’s nemesis, Google, will be represented by Sundar Pichai, who recently took over the Android platform in addition to his longtime leadership of Chrome and Google’s apps. Will he combine the two platforms? How can he balance Android’s open-source roots with the need for Google to make money off the platform?

We’ll also welcome back Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who is not only helping to steer a hugely important company trying to conquer mobile, but also inspiring millions of women with her “Lean In” book and larger project.

Twitter’s smart and funny CEO, Dick Costolo, will also return to the D stage to talk about the future of his iconic service, especially on mobile. And Ben Silbermann, the co-founder of Pinterest, another social networking success story, will make his D debut.

Elon Musk, who is merely a pioneer of both the electric car and private space-flight industries, will take our stage for the first time. We wonder: What has he done for us lately?

And to answer the question of what’s up at Google’s hardware arm, Motorola, we’ll have its CEO, Dennis Woodside, and his advanced research chief, Regina Dugan, who wowed the crowd at D9 when she appeared as the head of DARPA, the Pentagon’s futuristic research arm.

Since speech is a core, vital technology in the mobile era, we’ll welcome Paul Ricci, CEO of speech giant Nuance. Will he recognize our accents?

The CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, will talk about how the digital revolution affects traditional corporate giants. And Tom Staggs, who heads Disney’s theme parks, will show off the latest technology being used by visitors to navigate the iconic destinations.

Recently departed Windows chief Steven Sinfosky, who also ran Microsoft’s Office division, will share his thoughtful views on the new post-PC landscape.

For another look at the overall landscape, we’ll have Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker walk us through her famous annual Internet report. And PayPal co-founder Max Levchin will show off his latest project, which links technology and anatomy.

This year, we’ll also have some pairings of speakers we think will yield interesting insights. Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box, the well-known enterprise cloud-storage firm, will appear jointly with John Chambers, CEO of enterprise tech giant Cisco.

The CEO of Sony, Kazuo Hirai, will be joined by Jed York, the boss of the San Francisco 49ers, to talk about the intersection of tech and sports. From the entertainment world, we’ll have a trio of managers of famous stars, who have been investing in tech in a big way: Troy Carter, chairman and CEO of the Atom Factory; Guy Oseary, partner of A-Grade Investments; and Scooter Braun, founder of SB Projects. Respectively, the three manage Lady Gaga, Madonna and Justin Bieber.

The witty and sharp Barry Diller, who knows the traditional entertainment and Internet businesses inside and out, will be back, no doubt to defend his right, via his latest venture Aereo, to stream broadcast television. And new CNN boss Jeff Zucker will join him to discuss the future of all TV.

We’ll have Anne Sweeney, co-chair of Disney Media Networks and president of the Disney/ABC Television Group, paired with I. Marlene King, creator and executive producer of ABC’s tech-savvy hit show “Pretty Little Liars.”

Finally, we have a fascinating lineup of demos, including not one, but two companies that focus on another emerging post-PC segment: The Internet of Things.

So buckle up and get ready to enjoy, learn and network. It’s time for D once again.

According to numerous sources close to the situation, Yahoo has bid from $600 million to $800 million for the premium video site Hulu.

The reason for the wide range is due to the fact that the Silicon Valley Internet giant — similar to most bidders in the new effort to acquire Hulu — has proposed several different prices based on a variety of circumstances. That includes the length of the licensing rights for content and how much control the programming companies selling Hulu have over their media.

At the same time and separately, according to sources inside the company, Yahoo is also contemplating at least two other significant purchases — in the $150 million to $200 million range — each for a mobile and a communications company.

It’s certainly an ambitious and busy M&A agenda for Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer, who just forked over $1.1 billion in cash to purchase youth-skewing blogging site Tumblr last week.

Presumably, she is interested in upping Yahoo’s longtime lackluster video efforts — it famously lost out at the last minute on the acquisition of YouTube many years ago to Google — as the arena becomes more critical to advertisers.

But, said sources, while allowing the bid to proceed, Mayer is more focused on the integration of Tumblr, as well as other acquisitions that will bolster other key product areas.

Thus, sources said that the Hulu effort is being led at Yahoo by Los Angeles-based Ian Weingarten, VP of corporate development, who works for M&A head Jackie Reses.

AllThingsD.com first broke the news of that deal, as well as Yahoo’s initial interest and subsequent bid for Hulu, which is owned by a trio of media giants: News Corp., Disney and Comcast.

The site, which has both a subscription and an advertising business, was on the market in 2011, with the hope for a bid of $2 billion that came with several years of programming rights. The sale was pulled after those higher bids did not materialize.

But Hulu is on the market again in the most advanced effort to sell it so far, with bids coming in from a range of suitors over the last week.

Yahoo’s Mayer and COO Henrique De Castro had met with Hulu’s team earlier this month for a get-to-know-you, just after an effort to buy a large stake in French video site Dailymotion was blocked by the government there.

Besides Yahoo, others interested in acquiring Hulu include: Separate bids from private equity firms KKR, Guggenheim Digital and Silver Lake (in conjunction with Hollywood talent agency William Morris Endeavor); Time Warner Cable; DirecTV; and the Chernin Group.

There could still be others, of course, though a deadline for initial bids has passed. Interestingly, so far, neither Google nor Amazon have made official efforts, perhaps because the pair already have robust video platforms.

Chernin’s bid, as had been widely reported, started in the $500 million range, which is interesting since the longtime media executive was once the COO of News Corp. and was critical to Hulu’s creation. Translation: He’d know just what the video platform is worth and how the place works.

Of course, low bids at the start are part of the normal process; sources close to the owners said that any bids under $1 billion are unlikely to be accepted.

One thing is certain: Now comes what will look a lot like a very noisy game of musical chairs, in which the various groups will vie for one-upmanship, even as they talk to each other about possible joint efforts. Who the most attractive candidate is, of course, will be much debated.

In addition, there is much disagreement over who and how Hulu should be sold by two of its owners, Disney and News Corp., which have squabbled over its direction from the start. (Comcast gave up its management rights as a concession to federal regulators a few years ago, so is sitting on the sideline twiddling its giant cable thumbs and doubtlessly wishing it could be a bidder, too.)

No matter the ceaseless bickering among giants, the trio of media conglomerates are providing Hulu’s most valuable programming, largely television shows from their broadcast networks. And that is the real point of the negotiating, according to many involved.

“Hulu is a very nice brand and technology, but the entire negotiation will be about the control and price of the content,” said one person close to the situation. “It’s the only thing that matters.”

I sent an email for comment to Yahoo, but expect no response.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

Larry and David Ellison at “The Wind Gods” premiere

A few weeks ago, Larry Ellison threw a party in San Francisco for the premiere of “The Wind Gods: 33rd America’s Cup,” a documentary that also called attention to a whole lot of high-tech sailing set to take place starting in July in the San Francisco Bay.

But that 34th America’s Cup has been under some level of scrutiny of late, ever since an accident the day after the screening that resulted in the drowning death of a member of the Artemis Racing team, after its boat dramatically capsized in the San Francisco Bay.

That possibility of danger is abundantly clear in “The Wind Gods,” which was produced by Ellison’s son and successful movie producer, David Ellison. (His production company — Skydance — is also behind the new “Star Trek Into Darkness” blockbuster.)

This documentary certainly isn’t a 3-D spectacular, but it is a pretty dramatic paean to how the tech mogul’s sailing team, BMW-Oracle, after a decade of failed attempts, finally snatched America’s Cup in 2010 in Valencia, Spain, back from the Swiss team Alinghi and its leader Ernesto Bertarelli, a former Ellison friend.

Emphasis on former, according to “The Wind Gods,” narrated in basso-profondo tones by actor Jeremy Irons and in the construct of the underdog — in this unlikely case, Ellison — against the villainous snob from Europe.

This despite the huge advantage BMW-Oracle had via its USA-17 trimaran, with its breathtakingly massive, fabulously computerized rigid-wing sail, for which price was apparently no object.

“Someone once asked me if it’s worth $100 million to win the America’s Cup,” said Ellison in the documentary. “It’s certainly not worth $100 million to lose the America’s Cup.”

Ellison was full of bon mots like this in “The Wind Gods” and also at the event, held at the new America’s Cup pavilion on the Bay and chock full of the Oracle team members — such as skipper James Spithill — as well as the enormous silver cup itself that now has a new carbon-fiber base similar to the materials the boats are made of.

“The biggest lie told in professional sports is, ‘We’re just going out there to have fun,’” he said in a panel discussion after the film was shown. “There’s one team that wins the championship — all the rest don’t.”

And Ellison later noted about being on the fast-moving boats in cold weather: “It’s very much like driving a car from Chicago to New York with the top down in January.”

After the panel, I did an interview with Ellison about the upcoming defense by Oracle Team USA, an effort that has been seen quite a bit of controversy over the dangers of the new boats in the upcoming race, called AC72s, which are 131 feet high, 46 feet across and 72 feet long.

Even before the accidents — there was a first capsizing by Oracle before the Artemis’ — the cutting-edge design has led to a series of worries about the success of this 162-year-old race and if a major lessening of the size and scope is needed now. Even Russell Coutts, the legendary sailing champion who is CEO of Oracle’s effort, said as much in an article in Wired magazine titled, “The Boat That Could Sink America’s Cup.”

“No matter who wins,” Coutts said to Wired, “they are definitely going to make changes: make the boat smaller, bring the team budgets down, stuff like that.”

Due to the high costs, though, there will only be the three teams that will compete in the Louis Vuitton Cup — also known as the America’s Cup Defender Series — that starts July 4, rather than more than a dozen that are more typical. Oracle Team USA does not compete in this part of the series. It will face the winner in the finals, which will take place from September 7 to 21.

Ellison is certainly not sanguine about the issues raised by the hyped-up boats and the extreme pushing of the edge, which in truth have been a reality since America’s Cup’s very beginnings.

But the unusual, perhaps never-to-be-seen-again, nature of the boat design is part of the reason for the film about the 2010 race, he said.

“It was important to document it, because that trimaran, that thing, 23 stories high, we knew it was never likely to sail again,” he said about the USA-17, which is now in a shed in San Francisco. “Not very many people would see it sail and it was such a spectacular piece of technology.”

In fact, its very existence was in question, due to the legal wrangling over the boat that Ellison had with Bertarelli, which is chronicled not in the Alinghi leader’s favor in “The Wind Gods.”

“You don’t think he’s going to like it?,” asked Ellison, with a sly smile, about Bertarelli’s arrogant portrayal in “The Wind Gods.” “He tore up America’s Cup rules and he did it because he thought he could get away with it and he was desperately afraid of losing.”

Since the documentary needed to be only 56 minutes for television, a lot about the boat’s technology was left on the cutting room floor.

“The engineering is phenomenal, there are 2,000 sensors on the mast,” said Ellison, who noted the new one for the upcoming race will also be outfitted from back to front with cameras and microphones.

“It’s primarily for the television audience,” he said, due to the efforts to make this America’s Cup, which will take place in perhaps the most picturesque setting under the Golden Gate Bridge, more interesting to viewers (races will be shown on NBC and elsewhere).

Ellison said he hoped that people not particularly interested in sailing will find the races gripping, although perhaps not in the same way he did when he first learned to sail taking lessons at the University of California at Berkeley when he first arrived in Silicon Valley. He was instantly entranced.

Why the attraction?

“I was always in love with the idea of sailing and the freedom it represents, the fact you can go anywhere with just the power of the wind,” he recalled, saying a series of National Geographic articles by Robin L. Graham about his solo 1965 sail around the world as a teenager was inspiring to him.

“It was an idealized version of it, but it was that combination of freedom and self-reliance that impacted me,” said Ellison. “What’s the right word? Independence. If you are a control freak [like me], you think that’s pretty great.”

Ellison has not decided if he will be on the AC72 — as he was at the last America’s Cup — as part of the crew in the finals.

“I am not sure, but I am getting into shape in case, although it’s a chore,” said Ellison, who is working out by running and playing tennis, but still makes fun of all the various athletes — including some on his sailing team — who are on a gluten-free diet.

Having already competed professionally, he said he might be satisfied to not compete himself, which does not seem very much like Larry Ellison.

“Whoever is best should be driving the boat,” he said. “In this case, that’s not me.”

America’s Cup practices on the San Francisco Bay resumed this week by Oracle, as well as Luna Rossa and Emirates Team New Zealand, for the first time since the accident — but with a drop in maximum wind limits and a list of new safety requirements. Artemis, which has had a new replacement boat brought in, has not decided if it is going to compete as yet in sailing’s premier regatta.

Until we know more and the next race begins, here’s the trailer for “The Wind Gods” to look back on the last one:

And here’s Ellison very funny interview with me, which took place exactly one year ago, at the 10th D: All Things Digital conference: