Buh-bye Blockbuster, hello Google! The search giant — and owner of YouTube — is reportedly negotiating with Hollywood studios to launch a pay-per-view service by the end of the year.

The Financial Times reports that Google will launch the service first in the United States, but in its talks with studios has emphasized the "international appeal of a streaming, on-demand movie service pegged to the world’s most popular search engine and YouTube, according to several people with knowledge of the situation," the FT said.

"Google and YouTube are a global phenomenon with a hell of a lot of eyeballs — more than any cable or satellite service," one executive "with knowledge of the plans" told the FT. "They’ve talked about how many people they could steer to this . . . it’s a huge number.”

While DVD rental service Blockbuster is struggling — Blockbuster may be filing for bankruptcy in the weeks ahead — companies that stream movies and TV shows to customers' personal devices, from phones to computers to TVs, are looking to bulk up their offerings.

Netflix is the king of such efforts right now — with an iPhone and iPod Touch app introduced last week — and Hulu and Apple may not be far behind.

Apple is likely to announce an improved Apple TV offering, rebranded "iTV" on Sept. 1, and Bloomberg has reported that the company has some content deals in the works that will allow iTunes users to rent TV shows for 99 cents.

Google bought YouTube in 2006 for $1.65 billion in stock, and has yet to find a way to make it profitable. This might just be the ticket, so to speak. Viewers would pay about $5 to stream newer movie titles to their devices, according to the Financial Times.