A while ago, it was widely reported that Google was all set to complete its acquisition of Twitch for about $1 billion. Twitch is the world’s largest website for the live streaming of video gameplay; essentially, users watch live broadcasts of others gaming. But according to the latest report by The Information, Amazon is now leading the race and is in final stages of negotiation with the video streaming website.
Even though Google has its own video streaming property, YouTube, they were still eager to acquire Twitch which would grant them access to the segment of streaming users which has remained out of their reach. Simply put, the Twitch acquisition would have given Google more complete coverage which would have helped them attract new advertisers looking to reach out to this demographic.
As we mentioned, Twitch is a video streaming platform very much like Youtube, which focuses particularly on streaming gameplay of various video games new and old. These videos include live video footage of online matches and can even include commentary and online giveaways in some cases. According to the company, the site gets over 1.1 million unique visitors per months which has nearly doubled their total of 600,000 in November 2013. Twitch also claims that Twitch users are much more engaged than other streaming services as a typical Twitch user spends about 106 minutes per day on the website.
Amazon had already clearly demonstrated its desire to push its video streaming service to the next level by introducing the Amazon Prime Instant Video streaming service. This is just further confirmation. According to the sources, Amazon’s biggest competitor right now is Netflix and this acquisition will help Amazon gain some much needed attention and diversity for its video streaming platform. With Twitch, Amazon can seamlessly integrate Twitch streaming content onto its devices providing users yet another reason to buy their products.
It’s still unclear how the Google and Twitch deal fell through but as soon as Google backed out of it, Amazon stepped in to acquire the streaming website. Some rumors have pointed to Google being worried about an eventual Anti-Trust lawsuit if it should gain to much control of the streaming market. Apparently the two parties reach an impasse when an appropriate “break-up” dollar figure could not be agreed upon in the eventuality.
The Amazon acquisition could be finalized as early as next Monday.
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