Earlier this year, reports circulated that Google had purchased the video streaming service Twitch for over $US1 billion, but today it seems there’s a new suitor: Amazon.
The online retail network is in the final stages of buying Twitch, according to reports by the Wall Street Journal and The Information. The deal could be announced as early as today, the WSJ says.
This comes just a month after a VentureBeat report that the Twitch/Google deal had been “confirmed,” which it appears was not true. In May, Variety first reported that Google was buying Twitch.
We’ve reached out to Twitch for more information and will update should they comment.
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16 responses to “Reports: Amazon To Buy Twitch For Over $1 Billion”
twitch.tv/p/thankyou
Someone’s popular
… What a useless rumor. Twitch president already mentioned about the changes and transition towards the acquisition by google which includes music muting and now suddenly amazon wants to buy it as well?
People need to stop weird rumors.
Actually I think the Amazon buyout has more credibility at this point given multiple magazines and websites are reporting that it’s basically a done deal?
As @niocora mentioned in the first post: twitch.tv/p/thankyou
Not rumor, confirmed by CEO
Sigh this is so weird. I guess Google got rejected since Twitch realise the big hate of what Google was going to do to the streams.
Good decision by Twitch but I seriously don’t understand what is going on. Not long ago Google confirmed purchase and Twitch was making changes and listed the changes to come. Out of a sudden now Amazon is the buyer.
Hopefully we get a full article covering this story.
It may be one of the requirements from any of the big players that such protections were put in place prior to or part of the sale. Otherwise there is a huge litigation risk that neither would want to inherit (Google managed to get away with it when they bought youtube, but the risk is much higher now). Who knows, will be interesting to see the full details as you say.
I am actually curious why Google backed off, is it due to Twitch’s respond or was it something to do with competition law since technically you can’t buyout other companies to dominate on a certain field.
Was it ever actually confirmed that google was involved? It might well have been someone was buying twitch and everyone assumed it was google. I remember a lot of talk but I can’t distinctly remember anything where someone from either company said anything official. Might well have happened, I’m not exactly someone who cares about live streaming so I’m not following it too closely.
REPORT: I WILL BE BUYING TWITCH FOR A SANDWICH
I RAISE YOU IN THE NEGOTIATION STAKES: I WILL BUY IT FOR TWO SANDWICHES AND A LLAMA.
HALT! I WILL OFFER A 1.1KG BOX OF TROLLI SOUR WORMS
SOLD TO THE MAN IN THE FUNNY HAT.
On a side note this now means the entire Internet hates you.
So no change then? WOOO
Anyone who says that Amazon is a better owner than Google for Twitch has more trust of Amazon than most.
Pretty much what I thought as well…..
Who’s ready to buy their proprietary twitch streaming and viewing devices?