YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/youtube-to-acquire-videogame-streaming-service-twitch-for-1-billion-sources-1201185204/

by Ocerge • 12 years ago

403 224 12 years ago

variety.com

rinon• 12 years ago

Does anyone have any other confirmation of this? Seems like a crazy rumor, but... maybe?

NicoJuicy2• 12 years ago

It seems logical, i noticed more articles concerning Twitch. So probably Google picked that up in their big data analytics.

An acquisition would seem logical then.

vdaniuk2• 12 years ago

If confirmed, this would definitely be a smart decision. Twitch will be extremely important in ecosystem development as e-sports break in the mainstream worldwide. Lots of engaged eyeballs.

Google near monopoly on online video market bugs me though, community at large would benefit from multiple players and more competition.

korzun• 12 years ago

One will argue that 'e-sports' already peaked in 2002.

amelim• 12 years ago

I disagree. Games like Dota 2 and League of Legends are filling sports stadiums and giving out multi-million dollar prize pools these days. If anything, at least in the United States, they are on the rise.

vdaniuk2• 12 years ago

Sure, but that may have been just a local peak. "e-sports 2.0" will hit really big, at the scale of social networks. We just need a killer game for the post-pc era.

im3w1l2• 12 years ago

As time goes on the non-gamer generations die off. The gamers grow richer and their willingness to pay increase. The new generations will probably also game.

keypusher3• 12 years ago

Esports is far bigger now than it was 10 years ago. League Of Legends and Dota 2 are far bigger than the audeinces Starcraft or Counterstrike ever generated. Tournaments are now being held on sports stadiums in the US and EU. LoL world championships last year drew 35 million viewers, and filled the Staples Center in LA. The Dota 2 International tournament this year will likely top a $7 million prizepool, and sold out Key Arena in Seattle. Esports is just getting started.

whatrippingfun• 12 years ago

Agreed about the growing e-sports market. Plus the Twitch Plays Pokemon experiment showed how it could break in to the casual market as well.

alexcroox2• 12 years ago

Not just that, don't the new consoles have options to stream direct to Twitch? I don't remember seeing that option for Youtube...

karangoeluw2• 12 years ago

Reps for YouTube and Twitch declined to comment.

Yeah. I call this just a rumor.

objclxt3• 12 years ago

...a publicly traded company like Google is not going to comment on acquisition rumors, for many, many reasons. Variety normally has good sources - if they're reporting it, a deal is almost certainly being discussed. Maybe it won't complete, but this isn't some random posting on Secret here.

dublinben• 12 years ago

Your comment made me wonder. Is there any site where people (users or editors) track and check up on predictions like this made by various media outlets?

I'd find it really helpful if I could point to a database showing that Variety or WSJ had a 90%+ accuracy in predictions like this, whereas another site might have a 50% accuracy.

snorrah• 12 years ago

Declining to comment literally doesn't mean anything. They are not saying yes OR no, possibly because as a big company you need to weigh up various effects of making public statements that might seem trivial to the lay-person.

karangoeluw2• 12 years ago

The opening words of the article are:

Google’s YouTube has reached a deal to buy Twitch

This means that the deal is done! Then there is no point in not commenting.

minimaxir2• 12 years ago

It's worth noting that Twitch partially became popular because it wasn't YouTube, and gamers could stream without content restrictions (e.g. copyright and region)

Miraculously, this could end up making YouTube comments even worse.

jds375• 12 years ago

While I do see this being an excellent acquisition for YouTube if true, I do agree. I don't see how YouTube could reconcile it's copyright stance with how Twitch fundamentally works.

mikeleeorg2• 12 years ago

IF this is true, I would think a lot of due diligence and legal counsel was discussed before moving forward. Especially with a deal this size. And if that's the case, perhaps YouTube would be adopting Twitch's less restrictive copyright policies. Because otherwise, what else would YouTube get out of Twitch?

mihai_ionic• 12 years ago

It also doesn't fit their app store policy at all, particularly in light of the recent takedowns aimed at guides or utilities for PC games in absence of any copyright claims.

thomasfortes2• 12 years ago

This could backfire hard, if youtube try to enforce same restrictions to streamers as they enforce to youtube videos, a lot of famous streamers would just jump out to another alternatives like azubu for example.

xbadxapple• 12 years ago

Agreed. I'm interested to how they will implement copyright issues too.

What I'm also worried about is design changes. YouTube had some poor decisions in this domain and if Twitch experiences stuff like this, it may turn to a rather unpleasant platform.

ughee2• 12 years ago

Are you suggesting that thus far that Twitch somehow was exempt from copyright claims?!

minimaxir2• 12 years ago

It's much, much harder to exert copyright on live content, in contrast to YouTube's ContentID system.

Twitch has taken down streams of unreleased games (which is fair because Twitch makes this rule very explicit), but that's still on an ad hoc basis.

chilldream• 12 years ago

Large companies tend to err on the side of taking down more than they legally "have to". I know of YouTube videos that were taken down because of copyright claims that were outright false (that is, the entity making the claim didn't even have any rights to the material that was allegedly being infringed). There's a lot of room to be more lenient than YT and still on the right side of the law.

azth2• 12 years ago

Well, looks like it's time to start another competitor :)

pooper3• 12 years ago

On a back of the napkin calculation, how much outgoing throughput would one need to be able to stream to ten clients directly on say 720p (~30 frames per second)?

I was wondering if it would be possible to create a set up where people can stream from home without any third party in between. Is that even possible for larger audiences?

jfoutz• 12 years ago

At this point it's probably a better move to build and then sell/license a streaming service directly to the game publishers. If they provide a streaming system, they can control the copyright directly.

baddox• 12 years ago

At least in the Starcraft II scene, Azubu seems to be the new player on the block. They must have some connections or be making some sweet deals, because in a relatively short time they've got several well known streamers using them.

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

To clarify, it's not as though Twitch is a magical world free from copyright restrictions. However, youtube's copyright enforcement system is extremely aggressive, overzealous, and a hassle for content creators to deal with. Youtube had a huge flood of takedowns for let's play videos due to mostly bureaucratic reasons rather than actual, legitimate copyright violations, for example. And that is what people are avoiding.

icehawk219• 12 years ago

I think it's important to take notice that Twitch's recent problems (the buffering problem, chat problems, the delay in general) are problems with their ability to cater to the big tournaments which causes me to really not be all that surprised if this turns out to be true.

The ways they've handled the tournaments have really disillusioned many streamers. I don't know if there's any better way for them to have dealt with the scaling problems they faced as I can only imagine the work that must go into supporting a live stream, with real time chat, that has 100k+ viewers (and for some of the bigger tournaments that's a small number). Something like a 30s+ delay in the stream makes it very difficult to have real interactions between the streamer and the viewers which is particularly bad for smaller streams. For the big guys it doesn't matter as much since their interaction is less back-and-forth and more broadcaster in style and there's absolutely no interaction with the tournaments.

The point is that if this is true it really doesn't surprise me at all. And whether or not it is I think there's definitely an opening for some serious competition to Twitch by making a service that is essentially an exact copy but from a business focus standpoint caters more towards the small-to-medium sized streamer and their audience.

kevingadd• 12 years ago

Buffering and delays got worse with the launch of PS4 streaming, they're not just due to tournaments. It is true that tournaments are a 'worst case' for them.

onewaystreet3• 12 years ago

Many of the popular streamers on Twitch are homegrown. Their success can be directly attributed to the Twitch ecosystem. They would likely take a big hit if they switched platforms.

scawe• 12 years ago

Pretty sure the delay in general is due to them moving to a new system about a year or so ago.

girvo• 12 years ago

Funnily, I remember talking a tech who worked on scaling at Twitch last year, just after the change to the new system. His biggest gripe was with how Twitch struggled with peering agreements, as European ISP's refused the terms Twitch required to get decent performance, so users suffered. Reminds me of the Netflix-Comcast debacle.

einrealist• 12 years ago

I agree. I hope, YouTube does not change much on the surface. Streamers and viewers are like deer in the night. A flash like integration into Google Accounts would most likely scare them away. I'm sceptical.

onewaystreet3• 12 years ago

YouTube recently launched a new streaming platform. I don't think it has those restrictions anymore. Their problem has been that they haven't been able to compete with Twitch's community.

lclarkmichalek• 12 years ago

Community is a strong word for that shit hole GreyFaceGreyFace

leccine• 12 years ago

First of all, you need Google+ in order to use Youtube (very hard without it) while people just want to watch streams, they don't care about failed social networks. This is why twitch was great.

Cthulhu_• 12 years ago

IIRC (but correct me if I'm wrong), Youtube works just fine without a login; 18+ content, rating and commenting won't work though.

shanelja3• 12 years ago

I agree.

I play an MMORPG called Runescape which has millions of players, I've been playing it since I was 12 and now I'm 21. I stream on Twitch once every few days and frequently have 1,000+ people watching me, subscribing, following and most importably putting eyeballs on Twitch's adverts (which is one of the largest concurrent none-featured community.)

If this happens I lose my anonymity (because Google+) which protects my account details from being stolen. If this happens I lose the ability to stream while playing music in the background, my followers even have the ability to request songs during the stream using an automated service, where does this leave me with regards to copyright then?

Even worse than this though is that if this happens, Google will in some way fundamentally change a service which I and my followers love to use - a service which they don't understand.

I speak for myself as a well known member of this community: If Google buys Twitch, Twitch will die.

This video basically (and very explosively) explains the current thinking of Twitch users: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loeFYdbvrZM (turn down your sound)

yread• 12 years ago

Why do you have to use copyrighted background music for streaming of a game?

n09n3• 12 years ago

If you are going to use the music to entertain your customers, pay for it like you're supposed to.

pacmon• 12 years ago

I'm really not sure why some of the other comments here are focusing on the playing of music on the stream. Obviously they've never watched someone gaming on twitch. Nobody watches twitch for the music someone is playing. People watch it to see other people play and talk about games. Music may be in the background but is often obscured by dialog and game sounds. It's not even close to the quality a youtube video for music supplies.

asdkl234890• 12 years ago

YouTube is a Juggernaut. But Twitch is not, and most of its audience is very young and focused on technology, manly video games. They will move fast. Create the next Twitch now. Wait for YouTube to force content restrictions on the old Twitch. Profit.

mattstreet• 12 years ago

And then when you're big, sell out like everyone else.

dpacmittal• 12 years ago

They could keep twitch independently running.

dshankar• 12 years ago

This is now probably Y Combinator's largest acquisition!

diziet2• 12 years ago

Biggest out of any incubator ever, if it happens -- beating out Angelpad's Mopub being acquired by Twitter for 350M.

robryan4• 12 years ago

If they do acquire Twitch I hope that they still let it run separately and just improve the back end (as while it has improved it still lags for a lot of people around the world).

I worry if they tried to roll it into youtube that it would turn people away. Their numbers are pretty dependent on a small number of League/ Dota/ Hearthstone and a few other games casters and steamers.

kawsper2• 12 years ago

I agree, Twitch livestreams is unwatchable for me most of the times I have tried to use it.

Youtube on the other hand, while available, have worked quite good.

Trufa• 12 years ago

It's funny that my experience is the complete opposite, I wonder if it's just our confirmation bias, or the fact that we are too small a sample. It could also be that us being in different countries (I assume) impacts a lot in our experiences.

onewaystreet3• 12 years ago

There's something wrong on your end because Twitch's streams haven't had problems since they introduced the 30 second delay last year.

arrrg2• 12 years ago

That’s sad. Less competition, worse both for those watching and making content.

Makers of (gaming-related) content for YouTube – worried about the future of YouTube – have often already been relying on Twitch to provide them some stability, to stand on more than one leg. This competition also insured that YouTube couldn’t do literally anything. Makers of content had a place to go if things didn’t work out.

This is a potentially great move for Google and more specifically YouTube, but I don’t see any upside for anyone else (ignoring those profiting from the sale for the moment).

United857• 12 years ago

Don't forget Kamcord, the other player in this space (and another YC company). Twitch isn't everything.

mcmillion• 12 years ago

I'm an avid gamer and this is the first time I've heard about Kamcord, so that's must mean something.

robryan4• 12 years ago

From a quick look it is videos, not streaming? Also mobile only? It isn't really currently the same space.

timdorr• 12 years ago

I don't see how this means less competition. Who else is even directly in the game streaming business?

arrrg2• 12 years ago

It’s not all about streaming. Or it can be all about streaming. YouTube and Twitch were very much direct competitors, even ignoring YouTube’s live streaming.

Andrenid• 12 years ago

A lot of my "hardcore" gaming friends have been moving to http://beta.azubu.tv/ with all of Twitch's issues lately.

floody-berry• 12 years ago

Azubu doesn't let the general public stream so there is nothing for them to "move" to. I also don't know what azubu's plan is once they run out of money to throw at popular streamers.

smoyer2• 12 years ago

My son watches a lot of Starcraft tournaments on Twitch and his immediate response was that YouTube might actually improve the infrastructure so that they could handle streaming to everyone who wants to watch.

bdz2• 12 years ago

Sure, THIS CONTENT IS UNAVAILABLE IN YOUR REGION

Thaxll• 12 years ago

Their infrastructure is good enough, they're able to stream to 180k+ viewers in HD without problems.

coralreef• 12 years ago

Geo-wise, I believe they have issues in Europe

smoyer2• 12 years ago

Big tournaments often refuse HD connections and revert to 720p or 480p ... it's not our Internet connection.

bluthru• 12 years ago

Maybe it's just me, but I associate YouTube video with buffering, overcompression, and popups.

grrowl• 12 years ago

You can disable annotations (popups) on your Account Playback settings page[1]. Typically I have little problem with buffering or low quality unless I'm sharing the connection, but you can adjust the default quality settings on that page too.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/account_playback

tomeric• 12 years ago

Twitch has rapidly become the site I stay on the longest, mostly for Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering streams. It's the first time I enjoy watching a "sport" live. Just a few hours ago I decided to pay for a Twitch account in order to not see ads, something I wish YouTube would allow me to do (I don't want to use AdBlock, because I think it's unethical).

I hope that if this is true, it's a feature that YouTube will copy and not one that will be disabled in the future.

NicoJuicy2• 12 years ago

I didn't find pricing on the Twitch site. But for 9$/month (looked it up), i'd probably pay for YouTube to, if that means more copyrighted content is available to me with no ads

owenwil• 12 years ago

This is disappointing. YouTube's 'community' is extremely toxic, I can imagine if Twitch is rolled into it, it'll die a long, slow death.

thomasfortes2• 12 years ago

Twitch community is also pretty toxic.

Most of the time the biggest streamers put their chats in sub mode (paying supporters) to avoid it.

tehwebguy• 12 years ago

Recently I noted an anecdotal improvement: more gamers seem to be saying that a winning player "shit on" another player instead of saying they "raped" them.

hornetblack• 12 years ago

Seems a bit like Something Awful. They have a one time fee before you can post anything.

jewbacca2• 12 years ago

The Twitch chat is half the value of the stream-watching experience for me.

The "character" of the Twitch chat is valuable. The manically insane hivemind, with all the juvenilia and "shittiness" that is inherent to it, is a roiling primordial stew of genuinely worthwhile culture. It's the birthplace of memes in both the vulgar sense and the higher sense of that word, and, to me, feels like 4chan in its early days. The ecstatic chaos of the chat during an unmanageably large event is a unique and deeply valuable thing.

It was why Twitch Plays Pokemon was such a massive phenomenon. Channels which set their chats to subscriber-only mode are shooting themselves in the foot.

I've always desperately craved a comparable live mass chat experience for non-gaming-related events, eg during a football game, or a televised cultural event or major news story.

robryan4• 12 years ago

It can be, what people describe it as though is it is the digital equivalent to going to for example a football game. There is going to be a lot of toxic statements/ yelling made there as well but overall it adds to the hype of the event.

If you are watching a match with 100k people on Twitch of course there isn't going to be any valuable back and forward in chat but the chat stream as a whole adds to the experience.

objclxt3• 12 years ago

If you go by the content and style of comments on both, I think they're perfect for each other...I'm sure I'm not the only one with that sentiment.

free2rhyme2143• 12 years ago

Justin Kan is now going to be pretty rich. Good for him. Congrats!

scotty792• 12 years ago

Semi-related question... Do you know who came up with an idea of allowing companies to own other companies (and when)?

amirmc• 12 years ago

Probably at the same time corporations were granted legal personhood.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_personhood

raldi• 12 years ago

In most free countries, things are allowed by default. If you want to restrict something, then the onus is on you to pass a law.

scotty792• 12 years ago

So if I want my chair to own a website and collect revenue from ads it can? And I won't be taxed a penny since it's not me who earns this money?

Maarten883• 12 years ago

Compared to recent other aquisitions, 1 billion somehow seems like a bargain. Twitch has clear potential to play an important role in the future in TV and entertainment. Compare that to i.e. Snapchat...

joosters• 12 years ago

$1 billion but all in cash. Sensible sellers...

Maarten883• 12 years ago

Well, the buyer also happens to have plenty cash laying around in offshore locations, waiting to be used for things like this.

relampago2• 12 years ago

Yes I agree totally. Not to mention the crazy growth of eSports.

jonathansizz• 12 years ago

How much of a bargain does the original Google acquisition of YouTube, for $1.65 billion, seem today? Less than one tenth of what Facebook are paying for WhatsApp!

kibibu2• 12 years ago

YouTube wasn't super huge when Google bought them though, I'd suspect twitch has bigger brand recognition now than YouTube had then.

tomasien3• 12 years ago

I agree actually. I hate it when people compare things to Snapchat like Snapchat is silly (it's not) but Twitch could be HUGE. Like huge huge huge.

Maarten883• 12 years ago

That's what I mean. It's not a stretch to imagine average people watching Twitch for hours every day, and happily paying for it. And (e)Sports organizers using Twitch to stream/monetize their events worldwide, bypassing the networks.

There is, of course, that network neutrality issue in the US.

bdz2• 12 years ago

You now need a Google+ account to spam Kappa

And in before every popular channel gets shut down for copyright infringement...

kl4m• 12 years ago

You already need to link with a Facebook account to post on the biggest channels.

mhartl• 12 years ago

Wow, congrats to the Twitch team!

bobbles• 12 years ago

I wonder how companies like Sony feel about this considering a part of their service is now owned by Google.

runevault• 12 years ago

I hadn't even considered this, as both the PS4 and Xbox One have stuff in the core system for streaming to twitch (though PS4 also has UStream IIRC). That's an... interesting wrinkle.

TorKlingberg• 12 years ago

Yes, this could be really interesting. Microsoft's Xbox One has Twitch integration, while Google refuses to make a YouTube app for Windows phone. I could imagine Microsoft looking for alternative streaming services.

hookey• 12 years ago

I know of some Twitch streamers who migrated to Twitch entirely and stopped using YouTube because of what it had turned into. Where will they go to now?

jonlucc• 12 years ago

If Youtube screws this up and drives away the users, there will likely be an alternative that rises. That's how Twitch got so big, so it might be able to happen again.

KalobT• 12 years ago

A lot of people are saying this is a bad move because insert reason that contradicts YouTube's existence. But consider Tumblr's sale to Yahoo! and nothing changed. Google bought YouTube when Google has 1% of the internet traffic. YouTube already had 6% [2006] (and is the worlds most popular site per unique visitors).

To be honest, I'm surprised MSFT didn't try to buy them first.

tjmc• 12 years ago

Wow - what an amazing ride to acquisition. To think it all started when Justin strapped a camera to his head! Congrats guys!

nedwin• 12 years ago

Justin Kan = 2 acquisitions in 2014. Not a bad result.

Has anyone else done that?

free2rhyme2143• 12 years ago

Here's an idea: Google buys Twitch and shuts it down. Thus making people go directly to YouTube to stream.

But something more realistic is they buy Twitch and then integrate it into YouTube so everyone has to use YouTube to stream everything. Smart.

programminggeek• 12 years ago

It's interesting that YouTube is acquiring Twitch and not Google. I realize that's sort of a smallish point, but it's interesting how that might be announced officially. Google obviously owns YouTube, but in terms of branding and identity and control, it's interesting.

aet• 12 years ago

Maybe want to keep video under "YouTube LLC" in case they ever sell, or taxes?

azakai2• 12 years ago

I think this is not a smallish point. It implies that Twitch will be under YouTube, and not kept independent in parallel to YouTube inside Google. That says something about the plans for integration.

wildmXranat• 12 years ago

Time for for Twitch V.2. in my opinion.

There is so much copyrighted material on Twitch streamed by users, whether it games, music etc that it would throw youtube TM-auto filter into overdrive.

escaped_hn• 12 years ago

Ironically, most copyrighted music on twitch is basically a background process of a youtube video playing.

trevmckendrick• 12 years ago

Was Twitch a YC company?

Dobbs• 12 years ago

Twitch is (was) Justin.tv which is a YC company.

jwecker• 12 years ago

Justin.tv was part of the summer 2007 y-combinator batch (with dropbox and disqus among others). Twitch branched off of justin.tv a few years ago (I think technically part of the same legal entity at the moment but I'm not sure- they were trying to separate the infrastructures etc. when I left). Emmett, the CEO of Twitch, is also a partner at Y-combinator if that hasn't changed.

ricree• 12 years ago

They spun off of Justin.tv, which was in YC summer 07.

burritofanatic• 12 years ago

One summer night in 2007, I found myself playing poker with Justin Kan in a living room of the "Y-Combinator" building in San Francisco. Emmett Shear may have been there, but amongst the crowd in the living room was Steve Huffman, who was playing around with a new electric guitar, and Alexis Ohanian who was doodling on paper. I didn't know what reddit was at the time, nor did I know that the acquisition by Conde Nast had occurred -- I only connected the dots a several years later.

After seeing this headline, I can't help but think that the power of networks is real, as is the results of deliberate, focused dedication to one's direction and craft. Pretty awesome stuff, congratulations!

Orangeair• 12 years ago

Why on Earth would Twitch let themselves be bought by a company that was in the news just a few months ago for systematically destroying the Let's Play community?

Liongadev• 12 years ago

Money

gedrap• 12 years ago

Let's not pretend, many of us would do the same. Many people would quickly forget their opinion for $1M. And we are talking a billion. Can't judge those guys.

ntumlin• 12 years ago

It kind of makes me sad to think of all the bad things I would do/let happen for $1 billion, or even $1 million.

moistgorilla• 12 years ago

a billion all in cash

kyrra• 12 years ago

For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Let%27s_Play_%28vi...

I would argue that if twitch got big enough, they would have to deal with the same issues YouTube does today.

toastedzergling• 12 years ago

I wonder how many more months I have until I'm required to use a Google+ login to chat on twitch.

J_• 12 years ago

Does anyone roughly know what Twitch's revenue/profitability is? I know that they're pretty profitable, but I'm not sure to what extent.

1 billion USD seems somewhat low considering Snapchat was valued at 3.5 billion, and I'm pretty sure their revenues are non existent in comparison to Twitch's revenues.

tomasien3• 12 years ago

Congrats to Justin and everyone involved in Twitch!

As a side note: most of my friends are LoL fans, and I seriously believe professional gaming will be one of the major professional sports in the next few years, perhaps on the level of Hockey. They're super normal, social, extroverted people - yet they'll interrupt a trip to make us watch a LoL match on Twitch. They all came of it independently too.

I really believe Twitch could have been a big, independent company. They did what they thought was right and I NEVER want to be that guy that craps on acquisitions, but I wish this one hadn't happened. I was rooting for Twitch big time. Still, very happy for them, hope YouTube does this right! I assume if everyone doesn't Riot (pun intended) the technical chops at YouTube will actually make Twitch a much more pleasant place.

mkal_tsr• 12 years ago

Same here.

As a user of Twitch, I do not want this to happen. As a person with common sense, if I had an acquisition offer for $1 billion on the table, I'd sell out so freaking fast.

sergiotapia• 12 years ago

I hate YouTube with a passion, this is terrible news for Twitch users. YouTube is absolutely dreadful and makes design decisions that just go against common sense. This is a terrible loss. :/

Will I still be able to see Twitch streams on my PS4? Blergh.

relampago2• 12 years ago

After reading this headline my first reaction was a verbal "aww man!" I don't really know why. Is it that I don't trust google? Maybe, but I think it's more that I like supporting the little guy and not the BnL's of the world. When I hear of an acquisition like this, thinking of Valve, I fear the brands I love will never be the same.

Nanzikambe• 12 years ago

Twitch is massive in the Eve Online community along with other MMOs precisely because it isn't Youtube and allows streamer to play whatever background music they chose.

I can a fairly substantial move away from it if Youtube begin applying the policy that removes all audio, if even a snippet of something copyrighted is detected.tracks for

creativityland• 12 years ago

This will be interesting given the recent Google Plus integration into YouTube. Will the same happen to Twitch?

tpeng• 12 years ago

WSJ confirms talks -- "early stage" "deal isn't imminent"

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230442270...

elinchrome• 12 years ago

Newbie question here. How can youtube acquire things? Wasn't youtube acquired by google? So isn't it google acquiring?

benguild• 12 years ago

Why is this worth $1bil?

capred• 12 years ago

It's the largest streaming site in the world and could possibly be making 10 figures / year. YouTube isn't dishing out money just because they are really nice people.

vecio2• 12 years ago

I don't know what this means to my startup Shou.TV

dang3• 12 years ago

Since this is unconfirmed, we added a question mark to the title.

mbesto2• 12 years ago

Surely, YC knows whether this is true or not :)

But in all seriousness, shouldn't it just say the original title - "YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion: Sources". The Sources implying it's not publically confirmed, right?

dang3• 12 years ago

That headline still seems overstated given that other stories are contradicting it.

I suppose I should mention that I have zero information about this, other than what's appeared on HN.

tomasien3• 12 years ago

This tweet from a friend I assumed hated YouTube and loved Twitch sums up why this might actually be a home run https://twitter.com/macpheed/status/468237136882597888

cpeterso• 12 years ago

Why is this labeled a "YouTube acquisition" instead of Google?

firat• 12 years ago

Twitch.tv + Google Glass will be interesting.

room2712• 12 years ago

Surely this is a massive competition concern and should be blocked on such grounds?!

ZachPruckowski2• 12 years ago

There aren't many barriers to entry in this field though. It's not a situation like a utility/ISP where you can only feasibly have one last-mile connection due to permits or limited radio spectrum. It's not even something like a nuclear reactor which costs $10B and a decade before you can flip the switch.

I'm not saying I could build a streaming site in my closet this weekend, but it's not impossible for competitors to enter the space (or existing competitors to grow in the space) so long as Google/YT doesn't too anything too anti-competitive.

room2712• 12 years ago

I have to disagree with this strongly. There are significant economies to scale in any streaming service. For example, in terms of costs (streaming services require a lot of hardware). But also in terms of branding and reaching a critical mass in terms of content.

Natriceus• 12 years ago

My guess is that people who fled from Youtube to Twitch will just move on to other streaming sites, which in turn just helps to splitter up various communities even more.

tyrrvk• 12 years ago

curious is Twitch is seeing the writing on the way wrt net neutrality? They see big fees incoming from the ISP's to stream their content and decide to get under Googles wing now...

sjg007• 12 years ago

Congrats to Justin and co... including ycombinator. Big exit.

YouTube to Acquire Videogame-Streaming Service Twitch for $1 Billion?

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