If you stream video games on Twitch, your favorite online tool has been purchased by Amazon. But it could've been Google, if not for worries of an antitrust issue.
According to Forbes, reports from May that Google was in talks to acquire Twitch were true, but a potential antitrust breakup caused the deal to fall apart. Google owns YouTube, which also does streaming of video games. So the two companies could not agree on the size of a potential breakup fee if the deal did not go through due to antitrust issues.
And so Amazon stepped in and bought the video game broadcasting company this week, for about $970 million in cash.
Besides using computers to broadcast games on the Internet, Twitch.TV supports broadcasting streams while you play, or to later upload clips of games. Xbox One supports broadcasting via Twitch and posting videos to YouTube. PlayStation 4 can broadcast to Twitch or Ustream, with YouTube support coming in the fall with the system update 2.0.
"Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month- from The International, to breaking the world record for Mario, to gaming conferences like E3," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos in the press release on about the purchase. "Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community."
And Twitch was talking to more companies besides Google and Amazon. Ethan Kurzweil, who sits on Twitch's board, told Forbes, "A lot of people were interested but Amazon offered the best deal." Kurzweil added about Amazon's purchase of Twitch, "We think that Amazon is investing here in Internet infrastructure and something more than gaming media. What Twitch has really built here is a video-based community around any activity... You have to ask Amazon what kinds of plans they have for that kind of investment, but if you look at technical assets in the company it goes beyond the gaming vertical."
While Twitch or Google never stated publicly that there were acquisition talks, various media outlets confirmed the deal was going through. Of course, the acquisition by Google did not go through and Amazon added one more brand to its media empire. This enriches the offerings already available to its Kindle devices, including the variety of Kindle Fire tablets, the Fire TV set-top box and the recently launched Fire Phone.
