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Google’s $1B purchase of Twitch confirmed

237 points by owenwil 12y ago

Fuzzwah 12y ago
Is this going to lead to a crack down on playing unlicensed, non-royalty free music on streams?
- Blackthorn 12y ago
  Probably, but let's be honest here: that was going to happen even if Twitch was never bought.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Playing music on streams isn't stealing music. If the people listening to the stream like the music they hear, they're likely to try to find out what it is they're listening to and go listen to more of it. That means more music sales, not less.
  - bane 12y ago
    But now it becomes a "public performance" and that gets tangly real fast.
  - baddox 12y ago
    That's arguably true of a lot of music copyright infringement. I don't think it will stop the lawyers.
- Aldo_MX 12y ago
  Don't forget restrictions by location.
dickinurass 12y ago
google is a cancer
jacquesm 12y ago
Assuming this is all true (the article is sourced poorly): Justin and team very much congratulated, that was a long road from justin.tv to twitch.tv and now an exit of this magnitude. Hard-won, very much deserved, also a case study for a successful pivot. " We do know that Twitch investors who participated in past rounds are pleased that they will be getting significant returns that are multiple times the amount they originally invested. " Suggests that it was one of the investors that leaked the story to venturebeat, pretty classless, and really not-done in those circles.
- VonGuard 12y ago
  This was leaked about a month ago. Maybe 2. Twitch really is a phenomenon. There's such a diverse community of game streamers that I can't help but expect someone to enter this space to compete soon. There are millions of viewers, and some shows are super niche. Take for example TheMexicanRunner http://www.twitch.tv/themexicanrunner http://www.twitch.tv/themexicanrunner who is working his way through beating every North American NES game. Sounds impossible, but he's the guy that could do it. Elsewhere, people like Lirik and Sheever have become famous and make a living off of their broadcasting now. Quite an ecosystem!
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    I totally missed it, I was very much occupied at the time. What made me especially interested in the whole twitch phenomenon is that we always threw out the gamers because it wasn't 'real' content, totally missing out on the opportunity :) More power to them though for identifying the niche and running with it.
  - Kurtz79 12y ago
    The rising interest on e-sports (the recent DOTA2 tournament had 11 millions prize pool) is another market that they were able to tap quite well. Games are serious business.
  - bane 12y ago
    I've heard lots of concern in the community about this acquisition since many of the streamers also have youtube channels that got hit during the recent overzealous copyright nonsense that happened on youtube. Since Twitch is basically "violating" copyright in the same way they got beat up for on youtube, it wouldn't make sense for Google not to do the same with twitch, but then of course it would gut the service.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
nwh 12y ago
Sweet. That's another website on which I'll be fighting Google Accounts.
- gcb0 12y ago
  Also know as yet-another-google-account-for-spam. google fought so well the spam on gmail, and then they become the spam equivalent. i have one gaccount for main gmail, one for gtalk (dead), one for commenting on youtube annoymously, one for gvoice, one to have a different handle when on the phone (because circles do not work as promissed and I want to restrict people that can bug me while i'm mobile)... all because they can't handle leaving the services work isolated by default. of course that is good to them, because now they can say "7 new users for gplus! our product is awesome!"
  - macspoofing 12y ago
    >all because they can't handle leaving the services work isolated by default. ... because that makes no sense. First, because they want to build a cohesive and comprehensive service platform. Second, because a lot of users would prefer to have these services tied together. So what's left, either try to please everyone and complicate the service or provide a common vision for the platform. I think it's obvious that they would go for the latter. Having said that, they did fuck up in places. Real name policy was stupid. Like I wrote in another post, their great sin was trying to make Google+ a facebook clone, as opposed to a unifying system for gchat, search, youtube, gdrive, gmail, photos, and blogs. >i have one gaccount for main gmail, one for gtalk (dead), one for commenting on youtube annoymously, one for gvoice, one to have a different handle when on the phone (because circles do not work as promissed and I want to restrict people that can bug me while i'm mobile). There you go. This kind of insanity is always an option to the insane. What's the difference between this, and 'services isolated by default'?
    - gcb0 12y ago
      if they didn't force me to post all my youtube comments, app downloads and android game achievements under my real name googleplus I would probably only have one convenient google account. it is the same with amazon. I don't want to have the same account that i have with 1-click purchase powers on every dumb and insecure TV (that even sends back to LG my files names, who knows about what i type?) just so i can watch amazon prime videos.
outericky 12y ago
Congrats to team twitch. It was one of the first offices I walked into that made me wish I worked in a place like that. So much energy. So much fun.
orik 12y ago
What's going to happen to people streaming Nintendo Games? Are we going to have another youtube situation?
- ajross 12y ago
  What's a youtube situation?
  - kevingadd 12y ago
    Content takedowns without the DMCA or any sort of due process. (though, IIRC, Twitch does those already for pre-release game titles through agreements with various game publishers)
    - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
      Aka "being Googled by Google"
  - ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
    He's talking about when Google starting taking down (monetized) video game playthroughs on YouTube out of fear that they infringed copyrights and did not fall under "fair use" since their creators made money. The video game companies never initiated it, Google did. In fact the companies support playthroughs on YouTube because it helps with sales and builds communities around their games. They even wrote open letters to Google giving them permission to monetize gameplay videos made using their games.
Finbarr 12y ago
Congrats to the Twitch team!
yulaow 12y ago
I am surprised that others concurrents let Google buy it considering it was the only "serious alternative" to some functionalities of youtube. The monopoly of Google on video streaming is even stronger now
- ar7hur 12y ago
  True, but if the price is actually as high as $1B, it means that "other concurrents" at least tried to do something about it!
- chatmasta 12y ago
  Monopoly? Do Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and iTunes all not offer streaming products? Not to mention their Asian market equivalents (pptv, tudou, youkou).
  - TheAceOfHearts 12y ago
    Different kind of streaming. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and iTunes all allow streaming media after it has been recorded. Twitch and YouTube allow streaming media while it's live. There's a few other services out there that allow this, but not many. With something like Netflix you can just put up the content in a CDN, compared to a live stream which can be more difficult to manage.
  - PhasmaFelis 12y ago
    Try and get your cat videos on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or iTunes. Their "streaming products" of those companies and Google have as much in common as as, say, the "transport products" of Ford and Boeing. The only site still competing directly with YouTube in the global market is Vimeo, and, well, I doubt Google has much to fear from them.
    - dkns 12y ago
      What about dailymotion?
crazypyro 12y ago
"You must be logged into Google+ to view this comment" spam will be returning to twitch chats.... Either way, congrats to the team. As a long time user, I can't help but feel that this will only hurt the twitch.tv experience in the long run though. Maybe the improved stability for other regions will be a large enough benefit to offset any other changes.
- gcb0 12y ago
  the new faux pas will be you streamning a game on twitch and it showing up on your gplus status, which also shows up on your gmail address that your boss happen to have.
  - timothya 12y ago
    Why would that happen? Google specifically opposes "frictionless sharing"[0] (I think that's one of the reasons Google+ doesn't really have a write API - they don't want apps posting "on behalf" of users). And Google+ emphasizes sharing things with the right people using circles. Don't spread FUD. [0]: http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/google-plus-sign-in.html http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/google-plus...
    - gcb0 12y ago
      if you only agree to gplus account and does things in google owned services, you are sharing everything without even knowing. create a new account. agree to gplus. comment on youtube or use hangouts on device X. pronto, it was so frictionless that you didn't even notice. not it is public that you are using device X and that you commented on some youtube video. what you say may be true for non-google services, which twitch does not fall under anymore.
      - timothya 12y ago
        When commenting on a YouTube video, there is a checkbox where you decide whether to share that comment on Google+ as well [0]. Your choice is sticky - if you uncheck the box and make a comment, then that setting will be remembered and it will never post on Google+ unless you re-enable it. And you can choose whether you want to share that comment with the public or with particular people [1] (I can't think of any other commenting platform that lets you choose specifically who you want to share your comments with on a public page). Where are you seeing which device you are using shared on Google+? The only place I've seen something like that is if you have someone you've accepted as a Hangouts chat buddy and you've opted into the "share which device I'm on" in the Hangouts settings (all that shows though is if you're on a tablet, phone, or desktop computer though, not specifically which device). [0]: http://i.imgur.com/H9nHctO.png http://i.imgur.com/H9nHctO.png [1]: http://i.imgur.com/YtnpjEb.png http://i.imgur.com/YtnpjEb.png
pdknsk 12y ago
Maybe Google can fix Twitch not working in 32-bit Chrome on Linux now. Or better yet, introduce HTML5 video. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295984 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295984
- gcb0 12y ago
  that was probably to drive the price down. oh, you want that in money and not stocks? sorry, it does not work on chrome anymore. :)
pyrocat 12y ago
"In March, Twitch represented 1.35 percent of all Internet traffic" Wow, I didn't realize Twitch had that much traffic. That's something to be proud of.
- gcb0 12y ago
  that is actually awful. their ratio of infrastructure cost to revenue will never look good.
  - onedev 12y ago
    Well now that won't be a problem because Google has infinite compute resources.
- u124556 12y ago
  And half of that was probably twitch plays pokemon.
- jonknee 12y ago
  That's slightly misleading because their traffic involves live HD video streams for rather long periods of time. For example, 1000 Twitch users will represent orders of magnitude more traffic than 1000 Facebook users. Another impressive point is since the content is live it's not as easy to CDN like Netflix/YouTube. It's still a ton of bandwidth. I'm sure they'll be happy no longer having to pay that bill.
  - Chronic29 12y ago
    It is not misleading. The statistic is about traffic, not users.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Video will consume bandwidth like there is no tomorrow, and the bigger the percentage of updates on a frame-to-frame basis the larger the bandwidth required. With the resolutions involved that's actually not all that bad. We came within a hair of being kicked off the net for consuming too much intercontinental bandwidth in the late 90's. The internet was simply not designed with video in mind so it's testimony to how well it has adapted that something like twitch can even exist.
jzelinskie 12y ago
I hope at some point down the line this leads to the adoption of streaming VP8/VP9 codecs and using an HTML5 player rather than the resource hog that is Flash.
- lmedinas 12y ago
  And I have my fingers crossed for Chromecast support.
  - myko 12y ago
    In the meantime Lakitu is a nice Twitch client with Chromecast support: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kwd.lakitu https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kwd.lakitu
- MHordecki 12y ago
  There's support already for HTTP Live Streaming [1] which, while not really standard, is supported by many platforms. Just append /hls to the channel url and there you go. I guess the only step remaining is for someone to write an HTML5-based HLS viewer. IIRC the main technical barrier here is that <video> does not allow for seamless video switching (which is required for HLS as it adjusts bitrate on the fly). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming
ntakasaki 12y ago
I was hoping for a Windows Phone Twitch app soon. I guess this kills any chances of it given how they refuse to make a Youtube App and even lawyered up a took down a Microsoft made one over a year ago with no sign of an official app still. There is no place for Windows Phone in Google's ever expanding empire. Google's Mission Statement: “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” They should tack on a ",except on Windows Phone" to that if they wanted to be truthful.
- macspoofing 12y ago
  They should better support their customers on Windows Phone and Windows 8. On the other hand there are proxy wars all over the place between the tech giants. This is one. Another one is Microsoft being dicks and extracting Android licensing fees.
- boyaka 12y ago
  What's funny is that I have a Motorola Droid from 2009, the same time at which I could have gotten an iPhone 3GS, and the YouTube App is no longer supported on my Droid. I have my mom's old 3GS and the app runs perfectly.
- largote 12y ago
  Google's lack of support for WP is WP's biggest weakness.
  - stusmall 12y ago
    I borrowed a Lumina 920 for about a week and really liked it. Well built, cool UI. I especially liked the calender. The lack of native google apps didn't bother me too much. I've got waze to replace gmaps, the lack of a non-sketchy looking gchat app was annoying but that was about it. I can use the services I care through the browser and my email and contacts synced just fine. The real killer for me was the lack of a keepass app that supports 1.x DBs. If any of y'all are looking for a project, do that! You would have earned my $1!
    - 12y ago
sama 12y ago
where the definition of confirmed = "an anonymous source says to a semi-accurate publication".
- minimaxir 12y ago
  That's an improvement over most recent confirmations.
- chrishacken 12y ago
  Justin Kan posted something about the deal to his FB account a few months ago.
wldcordeiro 12y ago
As expected there's a ton of negativity towards Google in the comments here. Congrats to the Twitch team and I hope that Google and Twitch do some interesting things with this acquisition.
heed 12y ago
Will ycombinator receive anything from this as they initially funded justin.tv (where twitch spun off from)?
- pa5tabear 12y ago
  I assume they will. It seems like a similar situation to Soylent- a spinoff of a ycombinator company, that is billed as a ycombinator company.
demosam 12y ago
The (forced) merge of my YouTube account with Google account was one of the most painful experiences I've had to undergo and I still suffer from issues and annoyances that has brought about. I can't be excited about this acquisition because all I can think about is how they are about to slowly and painfully destroy the Twitch experience. What can we expect? Forced merge of Twitch accounts? A forced G+ page for every channel? Some kind of horrible Hangouts integration? Real name policy and its reversal in 3 years? Share this stream with your circles? Pervasive ad infestation? Exceptionally annoying wiggling bell on top right that demands my attention just to let me know that some person I've never heard of has invited me to an event I've never heard of on Google+? A new "clean/functional/consistent" interface that changes often and only gets monotonically worse over time?
- thezilch 12y ago
  Most of that already happens on Twitch...
- macspoofing 12y ago
  >The (forced) merge of my YouTube account with Google account was one of the most painful experiences I've had to undergo and I still suffer from issues and annoyances that has brought about. I know people bitch(ed) about that but come on, it makes a ton of sense from both Google's and end-user's perspective to standardize all Google services under one account. Anybody (here or elsewhere) would have made the same decision.. Their fault is that they waited as long as they did. Google+ also makes some sense because it does tie services like GDrive, blogs, photos, docs, videos (youtube), and chat together. The problem there was that they got spooked by Facebook and tried to copy it exactly (e.g. the real name policy, which was always stupid but they did it because facebook did it). It was a typical Microsoft thing to do; look where the puck is, and not where it's going.
  - res0nat0r 12y ago
    Please do any or all of the above. The idiotic Twitch chat spam and moronic memes makes my iq drop every time I see it.
ChuckMcM 12y ago
I'm tempted not to believe it since it makes sense to me :-) But more seriously, back when I played WoW I spent many hours watching some of the tougher boss fights on Youtube. Automating that process is a great way to unify those page views. And its a fairly strong 'you are a gamer' signal so probably a more valuable piece of advertising realestate.
ollerac 12y ago
I'm imagining that within a few months Google will buy the twitch.com domain name.
0xisaac 12y ago
Great, twitch is fucked.
sharpneli 12y ago
Let's imagine the worst case scenario: Forced Google+ accounts with realnames. Because no-one uses an alias in gaming scene ever. Automatic Content ID. Oh you played a bit of music even accidentally on background? Blocked. Oh nintendo wanted to block your game stream (http://www.zeldauniverse.net/2013/05/16/nintendo-cracks-down-on-youtube-content-creators-with-new-content-id-policy/ http://www.zeldauniverse.net/2013/05/16/nintendo-cracks-down...). This game is not available in your country! I know these are exaggerations. But at least some of them will be eventually implemented. That means it's time to switch services. Anyone know of any good almost as easy to use one?
- bergie 12y ago
  G+ ditched the real name policy recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars#Expired_Google_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars#Expired_Google_policy
  - sharpneli 12y ago
    I am aware of that. But considering how google has acted in recent years it wouldn't surprise me if they would reinstate that policy and try to force it to everyone because it worked with facebook etc. Google has this bad habit of deciding something and then forcing it. Real name policy. OpenCL on mobile. The list goes on. If they don't get any traction initially they will at the very least attempt to force it.

237 points by owenwil 12y ago

Fuzzwah 12y ago

Is this going to lead to a crack down on playing unlicensed, non-royalty free music on streams?

Blackthorn 12y ago
Probably, but let's be honest here: that was going to happen even if Twitch was never bought.
sillysaurus3 12y ago
Playing music on streams isn't stealing music. If the people listening to the stream like the music they hear, they're likely to try to find out what it is they're listening to and go listen to more of it. That means more music sales, not less.
- bane 12y ago
  But now it becomes a "public performance" and that gets tangly real fast.
- baddox 12y ago
  That's arguably true of a lot of music copyright infringement. I don't think it will stop the lawyers.
Aldo_MX 12y ago
Don't forget restrictions by location.

dickinurass 12y ago

google is a cancer

jacquesm 12y ago

Assuming this is all true (the article is sourced poorly): Justin and team very much congratulated, that was a long road from justin.tv to twitch.tv and now an exit of this magnitude. Hard-won, very much deserved, also a case study for a successful pivot. " We do know that Twitch investors who participated in past rounds are pleased that they will be getting significant returns that are multiple times the amount they originally invested. " Suggests that it was one of the investors that leaked the story to venturebeat, pretty classless, and really not-done in those circles.

VonGuard 12y ago
This was leaked about a month ago. Maybe 2. Twitch really is a phenomenon. There's such a diverse community of game streamers that I can't help but expect someone to enter this space to compete soon. There are millions of viewers, and some shows are super niche. Take for example TheMexicanRunner http://www.twitch.tv/themexicanrunner http://www.twitch.tv/themexicanrunner who is working his way through beating every North American NES game. Sounds impossible, but he's the guy that could do it. Elsewhere, people like Lirik and Sheever have become famous and make a living off of their broadcasting now. Quite an ecosystem!
- jacquesm 12y ago
  I totally missed it, I was very much occupied at the time. What made me especially interested in the whole twitch phenomenon is that we always threw out the gamers because it wasn't 'real' content, totally missing out on the opportunity :) More power to them though for identifying the niche and running with it.
- Kurtz79 12y ago
  The rising interest on e-sports (the recent DOTA2 tournament had 11 millions prize pool) is another market that they were able to tap quite well. Games are serious business.
- bane 12y ago
  I've heard lots of concern in the community about this acquisition since many of the streamers also have youtube channels that got hit during the recent overzealous copyright nonsense that happened on youtube. Since Twitch is basically "violating" copyright in the same way they got beat up for on youtube, it wouldn't make sense for Google not to do the same with twitch, but then of course it would gut the service.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

nwh 12y ago

Sweet. That's another website on which I'll be fighting Google Accounts.

gcb0 12y ago
Also know as yet-another-google-account-for-spam. google fought so well the spam on gmail, and then they become the spam equivalent. i have one gaccount for main gmail, one for gtalk (dead), one for commenting on youtube annoymously, one for gvoice, one to have a different handle when on the phone (because circles do not work as promissed and I want to restrict people that can bug me while i'm mobile)... all because they can't handle leaving the services work isolated by default. of course that is good to them, because now they can say "7 new users for gplus! our product is awesome!"
- macspoofing 12y ago
  >all because they can't handle leaving the services work isolated by default. ... because that makes no sense. First, because they want to build a cohesive and comprehensive service platform. Second, because a lot of users would prefer to have these services tied together. So what's left, either try to please everyone and complicate the service or provide a common vision for the platform. I think it's obvious that they would go for the latter. Having said that, they did fuck up in places. Real name policy was stupid. Like I wrote in another post, their great sin was trying to make Google+ a facebook clone, as opposed to a unifying system for gchat, search, youtube, gdrive, gmail, photos, and blogs. >i have one gaccount for main gmail, one for gtalk (dead), one for commenting on youtube annoymously, one for gvoice, one to have a different handle when on the phone (because circles do not work as promissed and I want to restrict people that can bug me while i'm mobile). There you go. This kind of insanity is always an option to the insane. What's the difference between this, and 'services isolated by default'?
  - gcb0 12y ago
    if they didn't force me to post all my youtube comments, app downloads and android game achievements under my real name googleplus I would probably only have one convenient google account. it is the same with amazon. I don't want to have the same account that i have with 1-click purchase powers on every dumb and insecure TV (that even sends back to LG my files names, who knows about what i type?) just so i can watch amazon prime videos.

outericky 12y ago

Congrats to team twitch. It was one of the first offices I walked into that made me wish I worked in a place like that. So much energy. So much fun.

orik 12y ago

What's going to happen to people streaming Nintendo Games? Are we going to have another youtube situation?

ajross 12y ago
What's a youtube situation?
- kevingadd 12y ago
  Content takedowns without the DMCA or any sort of due process. (though, IIRC, Twitch does those already for pre-release game titles through agreements with various game publishers)
  - cscurmudgeon 12y ago
    Aka "being Googled by Google"
- ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
  He's talking about when Google starting taking down (monetized) video game playthroughs on YouTube out of fear that they infringed copyrights and did not fall under "fair use" since their creators made money. The video game companies never initiated it, Google did. In fact the companies support playthroughs on YouTube because it helps with sales and builds communities around their games. They even wrote open letters to Google giving them permission to monetize gameplay videos made using their games.

Finbarr 12y ago

Congrats to the Twitch team!

yulaow 12y ago

I am surprised that others concurrents let Google buy it considering it was the only "serious alternative" to some functionalities of youtube. The monopoly of Google on video streaming is even stronger now

ar7hur 12y ago
True, but if the price is actually as high as $1B, it means that "other concurrents" at least tried to do something about it!
chatmasta 12y ago
Monopoly? Do Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and iTunes all not offer streaming products? Not to mention their Asian market equivalents (pptv, tudou, youkou).
- TheAceOfHearts 12y ago
  Different kind of streaming. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon and iTunes all allow streaming media after it has been recorded. Twitch and YouTube allow streaming media while it's live. There's a few other services out there that allow this, but not many. With something like Netflix you can just put up the content in a CDN, compared to a live stream which can be more difficult to manage.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  Try and get your cat videos on Netflix, Hulu, Amazon or iTunes. Their "streaming products" of those companies and Google have as much in common as as, say, the "transport products" of Ford and Boeing. The only site still competing directly with YouTube in the global market is Vimeo, and, well, I doubt Google has much to fear from them.
  - dkns 12y ago
    What about dailymotion?

crazypyro 12y ago

"You must be logged into Google+ to view this comment" spam will be returning to twitch chats.... Either way, congrats to the team. As a long time user, I can't help but feel that this will only hurt the twitch.tv experience in the long run though. Maybe the improved stability for other regions will be a large enough benefit to offset any other changes.

gcb0 12y ago
the new faux pas will be you streamning a game on twitch and it showing up on your gplus status, which also shows up on your gmail address that your boss happen to have.
- timothya 12y ago
  Why would that happen? Google specifically opposes "frictionless sharing"[0] (I think that's one of the reasons Google+ doesn't really have a write API - they don't want apps posting "on behalf" of users). And Google+ emphasizes sharing things with the right people using circles. Don't spread FUD. [0]: http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/google-plus-sign-in.html http://googleplusplatform.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/google-plus...
  - gcb0 12y ago
    if you only agree to gplus account and does things in google owned services, you are sharing everything without even knowing. create a new account. agree to gplus. comment on youtube or use hangouts on device X. pronto, it was so frictionless that you didn't even notice. not it is public that you are using device X and that you commented on some youtube video. what you say may be true for non-google services, which twitch does not fall under anymore.
    - timothya 12y ago
      When commenting on a YouTube video, there is a checkbox where you decide whether to share that comment on Google+ as well [0]. Your choice is sticky - if you uncheck the box and make a comment, then that setting will be remembered and it will never post on Google+ unless you re-enable it. And you can choose whether you want to share that comment with the public or with particular people [1] (I can't think of any other commenting platform that lets you choose specifically who you want to share your comments with on a public page). Where are you seeing which device you are using shared on Google+? The only place I've seen something like that is if you have someone you've accepted as a Hangouts chat buddy and you've opted into the "share which device I'm on" in the Hangouts settings (all that shows though is if you're on a tablet, phone, or desktop computer though, not specifically which device). [0]: http://i.imgur.com/H9nHctO.png http://i.imgur.com/H9nHctO.png [1]: http://i.imgur.com/YtnpjEb.png http://i.imgur.com/YtnpjEb.png

pdknsk 12y ago

Maybe Google can fix Twitch not working in 32-bit Chrome on Linux now. Or better yet, introduce HTML5 video. https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295984 https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=295984

gcb0 12y ago
that was probably to drive the price down. oh, you want that in money and not stocks? sorry, it does not work on chrome anymore. :)

pyrocat 12y ago

"In March, Twitch represented 1.35 percent of all Internet traffic" Wow, I didn't realize Twitch had that much traffic. That's something to be proud of.

gcb0 12y ago
that is actually awful. their ratio of infrastructure cost to revenue will never look good.
- onedev 12y ago
  Well now that won't be a problem because Google has infinite compute resources.
u124556 12y ago
And half of that was probably twitch plays pokemon.
jonknee 12y ago
That's slightly misleading because their traffic involves live HD video streams for rather long periods of time. For example, 1000 Twitch users will represent orders of magnitude more traffic than 1000 Facebook users. Another impressive point is since the content is live it's not as easy to CDN like Netflix/YouTube. It's still a ton of bandwidth. I'm sure they'll be happy no longer having to pay that bill.
- Chronic29 12y ago
  It is not misleading. The statistic is about traffic, not users.
jacquesm 12y ago
Video will consume bandwidth like there is no tomorrow, and the bigger the percentage of updates on a frame-to-frame basis the larger the bandwidth required. With the resolutions involved that's actually not all that bad. We came within a hair of being kicked off the net for consuming too much intercontinental bandwidth in the late 90's. The internet was simply not designed with video in mind so it's testimony to how well it has adapted that something like twitch can even exist.

jzelinskie 12y ago

I hope at some point down the line this leads to the adoption of streaming VP8/VP9 codecs and using an HTML5 player rather than the resource hog that is Flash.

lmedinas 12y ago
And I have my fingers crossed for Chromecast support.
- myko 12y ago
  In the meantime Lakitu is a nice Twitch client with Chromecast support: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kwd.lakitu https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kwd.lakitu
MHordecki 12y ago
There's support already for HTTP Live Streaming [1] which, while not really standard, is supported by many platforms. Just append /hls to the channel url and there you go. I guess the only step remaining is for someone to write an HTML5-based HLS viewer. IIRC the main technical barrier here is that <video> does not allow for seamless video switching (which is required for HLS as it adjusts bitrate on the fly). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming

ntakasaki 12y ago

I was hoping for a Windows Phone Twitch app soon. I guess this kills any chances of it given how they refuse to make a Youtube App and even lawyered up a took down a Microsoft made one over a year ago with no sign of an official app still. There is no place for Windows Phone in Google's ever expanding empire. Google's Mission Statement: “To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.” They should tack on a ",except on Windows Phone" to that if they wanted to be truthful.

macspoofing 12y ago
They should better support their customers on Windows Phone and Windows 8. On the other hand there are proxy wars all over the place between the tech giants. This is one. Another one is Microsoft being dicks and extracting Android licensing fees.
boyaka 12y ago
What's funny is that I have a Motorola Droid from 2009, the same time at which I could have gotten an iPhone 3GS, and the YouTube App is no longer supported on my Droid. I have my mom's old 3GS and the app runs perfectly.
largote 12y ago
Google's lack of support for WP is WP's biggest weakness.
- stusmall 12y ago
  I borrowed a Lumina 920 for about a week and really liked it. Well built, cool UI. I especially liked the calender. The lack of native google apps didn't bother me too much. I've got waze to replace gmaps, the lack of a non-sketchy looking gchat app was annoying but that was about it. I can use the services I care through the browser and my email and contacts synced just fine. The real killer for me was the lack of a keepass app that supports 1.x DBs. If any of y'all are looking for a project, do that! You would have earned my $1!
  - 12y ago

sama 12y ago

where the definition of confirmed = "an anonymous source says to a semi-accurate publication".

minimaxir 12y ago
That's an improvement over most recent confirmations.
chrishacken 12y ago
Justin Kan posted something about the deal to his FB account a few months ago.

wldcordeiro 12y ago

As expected there's a ton of negativity towards Google in the comments here. Congrats to the Twitch team and I hope that Google and Twitch do some interesting things with this acquisition.

heed 12y ago

Will ycombinator receive anything from this as they initially funded justin.tv (where twitch spun off from)?

pa5tabear 12y ago
I assume they will. It seems like a similar situation to Soylent- a spinoff of a ycombinator company, that is billed as a ycombinator company.

demosam 12y ago

The (forced) merge of my YouTube account with Google account was one of the most painful experiences I've had to undergo and I still suffer from issues and annoyances that has brought about. I can't be excited about this acquisition because all I can think about is how they are about to slowly and painfully destroy the Twitch experience. What can we expect? Forced merge of Twitch accounts? A forced G+ page for every channel? Some kind of horrible Hangouts integration? Real name policy and its reversal in 3 years? Share this stream with your circles? Pervasive ad infestation? Exceptionally annoying wiggling bell on top right that demands my attention just to let me know that some person I've never heard of has invited me to an event I've never heard of on Google+? A new "clean/functional/consistent" interface that changes often and only gets monotonically worse over time?

thezilch 12y ago
Most of that already happens on Twitch...
macspoofing 12y ago
>The (forced) merge of my YouTube account with Google account was one of the most painful experiences I've had to undergo and I still suffer from issues and annoyances that has brought about. I know people bitch(ed) about that but come on, it makes a ton of sense from both Google's and end-user's perspective to standardize all Google services under one account. Anybody (here or elsewhere) would have made the same decision.. Their fault is that they waited as long as they did. Google+ also makes some sense because it does tie services like GDrive, blogs, photos, docs, videos (youtube), and chat together. The problem there was that they got spooked by Facebook and tried to copy it exactly (e.g. the real name policy, which was always stupid but they did it because facebook did it). It was a typical Microsoft thing to do; look where the puck is, and not where it's going.
- res0nat0r 12y ago
  Please do any or all of the above. The idiotic Twitch chat spam and moronic memes makes my iq drop every time I see it.

ChuckMcM 12y ago

I'm tempted not to believe it since it makes sense to me :-) But more seriously, back when I played WoW I spent many hours watching some of the tougher boss fights on Youtube. Automating that process is a great way to unify those page views. And its a fairly strong 'you are a gamer' signal so probably a more valuable piece of advertising realestate.

ollerac 12y ago

I'm imagining that within a few months Google will buy the twitch.com domain name.

0xisaac 12y ago

Great, twitch is fucked.

sharpneli 12y ago

Let's imagine the worst case scenario: Forced Google+ accounts with realnames. Because no-one uses an alias in gaming scene ever. Automatic Content ID. Oh you played a bit of music even accidentally on background? Blocked. Oh nintendo wanted to block your game stream (http://www.zeldauniverse.net/2013/05/16/nintendo-cracks-down-on-youtube-content-creators-with-new-content-id-policy/ http://www.zeldauniverse.net/2013/05/16/nintendo-cracks-down...). This game is not available in your country! I know these are exaggerations. But at least some of them will be eventually implemented. That means it's time to switch services. Anyone know of any good almost as easy to use one?

bergie 12y ago
G+ ditched the real name policy recently: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars#Expired_Google_policy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nymwars#Expired_Google_policy
- sharpneli 12y ago
  I am aware of that. But considering how google has acted in recent years it wouldn't surprise me if they would reinstate that policy and try to force it to everyone because it worked with facebook etc. Google has this bad habit of deciding something and then forcing it. Real name policy. OpenCL on mobile. The list goes on. If they don't get any traction initially they will at the very least attempt to force it.