The consortium behind Hulu said late yesterday that the popular web video service is no longer for sale — pulling it off the market after the bids from companies including Amazon.com reportedly came in lower than they had hoped.

The New York Times reports that most of the bids did not exceed the $2 billion valuation that Hulu’s owners, including NBC Universal, News Corp. and Walt Disney Co., had been aiming for when they were weighing an initial public offering for the company last year.

Yahoo, Google and Dish Network were also said to be among the bidders.

Amazon’s interest was notable because the addition of Hulu would have given the company’s Instant Video service a shot in the arm in its competition with Netflix. Although Netflix has been struggling with a series of PR blunders, and Amazon has been beefing up its online video catalog, Netflix has said it hasn’t yet felt any serious competition from the Seattle company.

However, Amazon Instant Video stands to get a boost from its integration into the company’s upcoming Kindle Fire tablet, which has been attracting large numbers of preorders.

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