Twitch Officially Welcomed Into The Fold By Google

Twitch had long been rumored to be getting wooed by Google, and this weekend the purchase became official.

For those that aren’t familiar with the video gaming world, Twitch is a website that is dedicated towards allowing people to stream their individual games. This has allowed people to use Twitch to share their exploits in any number of video games with the rest of the world.

Twitch has also gotten quite popular as a way for people to watch eSports tournaments like those taking place around Dota 2 and other games of that ilk. Twitch’s business model has been one that has been getting popular over the last few months, and it caught the attention of Google in a big way last month.

Now Twitch has been officially brought into the Internet giant’s fold with a purchase price of a reported$1 billion. Gamesbeat is reporting that the deal is unconfirmed so far, but sources close to both companies have basically said the purchase is a done deal.

Twitch and Google have been tied together since an earlier report by Variety in May. Neither Twitch nor Google have been talking about the potential purchase since then, but plenty of people have been talking about how obviously smart purchasing Twitch would be for Google.

Most people believe Twitch will be folded into YouTube in some way, shape, or form. Google has been looking to get video game aficionados over to YouTube for the last couple of years and Twitch just might be their foot in the door.

Fans of Twitch now need to take a deep breath and try and figure out just how the purchase will affect the streaming service. It doesn’t seem likely that Twitch will be completely absorbed into YouTube.

Twitch will likely continue to exist on its own, but there isn’t any guarantee that will be a permanent development.

In the last few years, the streaming video service has been growing quite quickly. Twitch had just 3.2 million monthly active users back in 2011, but Twitch now has more than 50 million users per month.

That level of growth is what drew Twitch to Google in the first place. Being so mainstream that the service is now incorporated into the PS4 and Xbox One consoles was the final factor in convincing the Internet giant the purchase was worth it.

Now fans of the service are going to have to sit back and watch how Twitch changes over the next few months.