Hey everyone, Gamepedia’s streaming enthusiast here. Big news hit the streaming community this weekend, when YouTube (owned by Google) acquired Twitch.tv for a sum exceeding $1 billion. For those that don’t know, Twitch is a popular media streaming company that has grown exponentially in the past few years; reporting monthly viewers north of 45 million worldwide. The site currently hosts live streams for some of the largest esports tournaments in the world, the biggest League of Legends and DotA 2 events averaging 200-300k viewers.
At this time nobody can be sure what implications this purchase might have for users of Twitch.tv, or the changes their Google overlords have in store for the biggest streaming platform on the internet. The only thing left to discussion is the stance of U.S. regulators, who are expected to challenge the purchase, claiming the sale of Twitch would infringe on anti-competitive policies in the U.S. Between the buzz of potential platform changes and the imagery of a fat check lost in a sea of 0’s, I can’t help but think this is just another step Google is taking towards world domination of the IT industry.