Amazon acquires Twitch.tv

Everybody thought it would be Google, but it’s actually Amazon.

Today, I’m pleased to announce we’ve been acquired by Amazon. We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster. We’re keeping most everything the same: our office, our employees, our brand, and most importantly our independence. But with Amazon’s support we’ll have the resources to bring you an even better Twitch.

Most of the times some hot startup gets acquired it’s some vague nonsense I don’t care about, but Twitch – Twitch I care about. I use it almost every day, and seeing it in the hands of a company with zero presence in my home country and no history with video, streaming (like I said, Amazon has no presence here), or gaming makes me uneasy.

Twitch is one of the very rare cases where I would have actually preferred Google – or better put, YouTube – buy it. Google+ is by no universally accepted as a mistake, Google is backtracking from it, so that most likely would not have been an issue. The combination Twitch+YouTube looked great on paper – much better than Amazon+Twitch.

This acquisition has me worried for the future of Twitch.

21 Comments

  1. 2014-08-25 9:47 pm
    • 2014-08-25 10:08 pm
      • 2014-08-25 10:13 pm
        • 2014-08-26 10:19 am
    • 2014-08-25 10:46 pm
      • 2014-08-26 7:47 am
        • 2014-08-26 10:37 pm
    • 2014-08-26 12:35 am
      • 2014-08-26 1:59 pm
        • 2014-08-26 4:42 pm
          • 2014-08-26 5:01 pm
          • 2014-08-26 11:15 pm
  2. 2014-08-25 10:59 pm
  3. 2014-08-26 3:11 am
  4. 2014-08-26 3:18 am
  5. 2014-08-26 5:19 am
    • 2014-08-26 8:09 am
  6. 2014-08-26 10:37 am
  7. 2014-08-26 5:52 pm
    • 2014-08-26 10:40 pm
  8. 2014-08-26 10:32 pm