Get ready for the launch of Hulu which is expected to take place as a private beta possibly as soon as next week. NBC, who is in a joint venture with Fox to create the online video download site today pulled its video clips from Google’s YouTube site and closed a channel in what was confirmed by an NBC spokesperson as a move to help the launch of Hulu, a new online video site.

Although the new online service doesn’t appear to be a video sharing site, it could be seen as a direct competition for YouTube and having NBC pull its content from YouTube only enforces that idea. However NBC insists that the move is not making a stance against Google, but only to lessen the competition when NBC’s own new video download site launches. According to a YouTube spokesperson, Google and YouTube were informed about the plans as early as Friday.

NBC has announced that they will be offering free downloads of the popular television episodes through a new service of their own called “NBC Direct”. This move is part of NBC’s overall plan to expand the digital distribution of its programs with the ability to set their own price and provides further competition for its former partner iTunes.

There are a few small caveats with the new service, however. For one, the episodes can only be viewed on PC’s running Microsoft Windows (how interesting). They company says they have future plans that will allow the files to be played on portable devices and eventually Mac’s, but not at this point. The files are also available for download only for the first 7 days after the episode has aired, and then will be removed. Also, you won’t be able to escape commercials with this offering. The downloaded episodes will contain advertising and you won’t be able to skip over them.

It certainly didn’t take NBC very long to get over its break-up with Apple’s iTunes. Only a few days after NBC announced that they intended to pull their video content from iTunes, and after a well publicized dispute, NBC has now announced a new partner.

Today NBC Universal and Amazon announced that NBC’s video content will now be available on Amazon’s Unbox media download service. Amazon and NBC are offering a number of incentives hype up the launch of the new content, too. The pilots of the new series of Bionic Woman and Chuck are available for free, even before the first episodes air. Other shows will normally be available for download the day after they air and the companies are even offering 30% off for buying seasons in advance.

NBC was an early-adopter of Apple iTunes, being the second major company back in 2005 to sign on with Apple to provide video content for the download service. Now, a short two years later NBC has announced its intentions to end their relationship with Apple and discontinue providing content for iTunes citing that they are unhappy with iTunes pricing policy and piracy control, or lack thereof.

NBC has over 1500 hours of TV and movies currently on iTunes, and according to a NYT report the two companies are in negotiations which may mean that NBC could be doing a little bit of muscle-flexing might not really upset enough yet to want to pull all of its content.