Amazon Acquires Twitch For A Sum Believed To Be Around $1Billion

Aran Suddi 19 Comments

Update: Amazon has confirmed the purchase for $970 million.

Original Story

There was much rumour and speculation that Twitch was being bought out by an large company, with many believing Google had the streaming service in its sights. After all Twitch has grown rapidly in just the three years it has been operational, and last year it reached 45 million unique viewers per month with six million broadcasts on average each month too. However, Googles acquisition wasn’t to be.

Amazon is the major corporation that has acquired Twitch, in a deal thought to be around the $1 billion mark, though that is yet to be fully confirmed. The news comes from Twitch’s CEO, Emmet Shear, who released a statement on the website explaining why Amazon was chosen.

Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon. We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.

It isn’t the first streaming service Amazon has acquired as it bought the movie and TV streaming and rental service LoveFilm in 2011. Emmet says that Twitch will retain independence and its name, but we’ll have to see what kind of additions and changes Amazon will want to enact on its latest purchase.

Source: Twitch/2

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19 Comments

  1. Wow I didn’t expect Amazon to buy them out. I did expect Google though. This a big surprise but a better company in my eyes.

  2. Only marginally better than a buyout from Google, because it means there’s still a degree of competition in the market. Just so happens that they’ve been bought out by another monolithic company that I dislike but have to tolerate in my every day life.

  3. Would have preferred them to remain indie, but hopefully this won’t turn out quite as bad as I feared it would with Google, as this means there’s still some competition.

  4. Hilarious how the press pretty much reported it as fact that it was Google, and now all look like total idiots.

    • Total idiots is a bit harsh, google were seemingly the likely candidate. Its not like they said Greggs were buying it.

      • The source that leaked this a few hours ago said that the Google deal fell through, with Amazon then stepping in recently to pick up where they had left off.

      • Almost as bad as the idiotic comments when twitch modified it’s services “Google ruin everything ‘. Do these comments now apply to Amazon?

      • Well google do ruin everything try buy Imo. As for the twitch changes, I guess as the deal hadn’t happened yet the changes were made by twitch. And btw you might want to stop throwing insults about, tsa doesn’t tend to tolerate it like other sites do.

  5. Better than google, but not by a huge margin. Expect copious amounts of lovefilm ads.

  6. I like Amazon.

  7. I don’t get how it could be worth that much!

  8. A good news. There is competition in the market which should be good for us, consumers. Over the years, I have grown to dislike Google and some of their policies. Hopefully, Twitch will retain themselves after this deal.

    PS I like the fact that the first rumour said : ‘970 million $ CASH’. They specifically added the word ‘cash’. It reminded me of the mountains of cash Pablo Escobar was supposed to have. So much that rats were chewing up his money :)

  9. Glad to see they’re wisely spending the money they should have paid in taxes to the UK treasury.

    F you Amazon.

  10. how is it worth that much, makes no sense to me. hey ho.

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