Amazon To Acquire Twitch

August 26, 2014

After what seemed like a lock that Google would acquire streaming service Twitch, it was announced today that online shopping juggernaut Amazon would acquire Twitch. The deal sees Amazon purchasing all shares of Twitch Interactive for $970 Million, with the deal expected to close some time before the end of the year.

On the Twitch side, CEO Emmett Shear speaks of the deal: “Amazon and Twitch optimize for our customers first and are both believers in the future of gaming. Being part of Amazon will let us do even more for our community. We will be able to create tools and services faster than we could have independently. This change will mean great things for our community, and will let us bring Twitch to even more people around the world.”. On the other side, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is also excited about the acquisition: “Like Twitch, we obsess over customers and like to think differently, and we look forward to learning from them and helping them move even faster to build new services for the gaming community.”

The acquisition of Twitch bolsters Amazon’s growing web content & entertainment division, which includes eBook delivery (Kindle), streaming video (Amazon Instant Video), cloud computing (Amazon Web Services) and even game development (Amazon Games).