After months of rumors suggesting that Google was preparing to acquire Twitch, Amazon crashed the party and acquired it to themselves for $970 million. The announcement is surprising as reports sugested that YouTube and Twitch had already reached a $1 billion buyout agreement to bring Twitch's platform and massive community under Google's umbrella.
Twitch began in June 2011 by Justin Kan and Emmett Shear, co-founders of Justin.tv. The site was one of the first to host live streaming videos of something that was happening at that moment.
"Broadcasting and watching gameplay is a global phenomenon and Twitch has built a platform that brings together tens of millions of people who watch billions of minutes of games each month," said Amazon's Jeff Bezos. "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."