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Report: YouTube Buying Twitch.tv For $1 Billion
Variety reports that Google's YouTube unit has reached a deal with Twitch.tv to buy the game-streaming service for $1 billion. From the article:
"The deal, in an all-cash offer, is expected to be announced imminently, sources said. If completed the acquisition would be the most significant in the history of YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006 for $1.65 billion. ... YouTube is preparing for U.S. regulators to challenge the Twitch deal, according to sources. YouTube is far and away the No. 1 platform for Internet video, serving more than 6 billion hours of video per month to 1 billion users worldwide, and the company expects the Justice Department to take a hard look at whether buying Twitch raises anticompetitive issues in the online-video market."
For mysterious reasons that will be 'explained' only by spokesweasels emitting word salad, this will become the Big Bad Scary antitrust issue of the day, while the rapid consolidation of physical network infrastructure (despite the radically higher barriers to entry) will quietly recede into the background.
Bummer =/
This channel has been suspended due to multiple copyright claims from Nintendo of America.
the amount of cash it costs to make live video is not cheap twitch is not really a money maker look at other game streaming sites they all went bottom up becouse of that reason.
twich doesnt have a ton of users compared to youtube and the biggest streams usually dont do twitch advertising but get sponsorship deals.
on the other hand google does have the servers available for it so if the rumour is true (which i doubt) it could be cheaper then expected to run the service
Checkbox: Automatically convert your archived videos to Youtube.com videos permanently?
God spoke to me
Since by YouTube's standards, everything on Twitch is a 'copyright violation' (streaming footage of a video game and completely ignoring that most of it is Fair Use with added content) I really have to wonder how they intend to deal with the corporate trolls who are now going to descend on Twitch like the vultures they are.
I imagine that will involve giving most of the money currently going to the content creators to the copyright asserters. The RIAA model.
Extinguish.
Yeah, maybe Comcast or Verizon instead.
I know Twitch TV and Justin TV are closely linked. I think in fact that Twitch is an offshoot of JTV and the user accounts are shared. Is YouTube buying JTV as well, will JTV go on independently, or will JTV be shut down?
If I can be modded down for being a troll, can I be modded up for being an orc, or a balrog?
Scintillating logic!
You should have been on Microsoft's legal team team during the IE anti-trust trail.
Back when I was a kid the last millenium (80-90s), a billion as a lot of money. It was a domain that only Bill Gates and a handful of other chosen few were allowed to occupy. Now every damn internet start up is getting a billion each at least, often in the double digits.
Shit with absolutely no real world business prospects to justify the price they command. Are we in Internet bubble 2.0?
Hell, I don't even get why people watch athletics on tv. Talk about dull. I'd rather play the damn sports casually than just watch it on tv.
THIS. E-sports is the next big media spectacle. It's like the Olympics, for people who can't enjoy sports but who enjoy watching gaming.
right next to that 48.5 billion article doesn't it
People watch it for the personalties or banter between streamers.
Pro tournaments can be fun to watch sometimes. Depending on who is casting they really understand the audience and it isn't always presented in the same style as a super serious 'sports' show.
People also like to watch and learn, see interesting things that they can try and copy or weird tactics that really only work under certain conditions. Its also nice to see some of the best players in the world thrown off by special tactics.
I kind of wondered the same thing until I started watching. I originally went there to look at actual game play footage for a game I was thinking of picking up. In the process I found a few streamers who I actually enjoyed watching. They were funny, interactive with their viewers, and pretty good gamers to boot. Now I go back pretty much every day to watch while I work or surf. It's replaced some TV and podcasts as my "background noise".
Keep in mind most of the smaller streamers (and those tend to be the more entertaining to watch) are not e-sports try-hards. Their play is more casual. I tried a few of the bigger streams but yet, just watching someone team grind to keep their K/D is boring as watching golf.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Well, (for me) it's like an interesting talkshow. I watch Quickybaby play World of tanks, partly because I like that game and can learn a few things watching someone really good play it, but also because he talks about all kinds of things. It's just like watching kevinpollakschatshow, but framed around a game instead of Hollywood.
OTOH there's a lot of people on twitch playing the game and saying nothing, that I don't understand. Boring.
Maybe it will start to work correctly at last.
Why would regulators care at all about this deal? Twitch isn't a public company.
Whether a company is traded publicly or not is irrelevant to anti-trust concerns. The only thing that being a publicly traded company means is that the stock is traded on an exchange. That's all. Many large companies are not publicly traded and anti-trust regulators are concerned with whether the merger will adversely affect consumers and competition in the market. Whether the stock is traded on a stock exchange is completely unimportant to the analysis.
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