Forums / Discussion / General

Source
http://variety.com/2014/digital/news/youtube-to-acquire-videogame-streaming-service-twitch-for-1-billion-sources-1201185204/

Uh oh.

Well lets hope they do a Yahoo and do nothing to the interface.

…
……

Actually the deal is being "discussed", nothing official yet.

Still, let's way the pros and cons here
Pros: – Twitch has been growing at a crazy rate for the last couple years, faster than staff can handle for the most part. Google buying Twitch could really help boost their development at a faster rate to meet the demands of all the viewers watching constantly
- This could mean that the VOD feature will be refined and work much better. I would particularly love this because I have had to go to sleep earlier and so miss all the late night streamers that I usually love to watch. Having a post recording video player that actually works without lagging ever 10 minutes would be wonderful.
- Google could pull a Yahoo and do next to nothing to change the interface

Cons: – Google could totally fuck over the Twitch partners with the same weird copyright shit that they've been doing to Youtube partners. This would really suck because it would handicap all the streamers that are relatively small but are still able to get by streaming full time.
- They could start forcing us to sign into Twitch through Google+ like they did with Youtube. This wouldn't be too bad though if you already linked your Youtube account to G+ then it should be a little less of a hassle to link Twitch to the rest of that as well
- Twitch loses its user friendly ability to communicate with staff
- They could change the interface a million times and each time make it worse when it was supposedly supposed to be better
- They lay off all the current Twitch staff and replace them with Google staff

Really, I could live through a million interface changes and whatever other annoying shit they may put us through, but I am extremely worried about how this is going to affect the streamers. I've grown quite fond of all the streamers I've been watching, I would hate to see their ability to live off streaming be crushed by Google screwing them over. I would really like Google to stop being the evil corporation it turned into in 2013.

That's all I'm gonna say about it for now, really I'm probably gonna try to avoid this nonsense as much as I can because I am not looking forward to all the preemptive gloom and doom that's already happening before Google has even changed anything yet.

This why there should always be alternate video sites.

Why are you all acting like this is a disaster

Obviously because Google is worse than the Devil if he was a pedophile.

@Fridge

I was thinking the same thing,

Acquisitions don't necessarily mean the end of all things. It may not even change anything at all the for the end user. Like the Tumblr acquisition for example

But that's if Google is feeling as generous as Yahoo!

I can kinda see why Google might make this choice though. This is a good move if they really want to capitalize on the lets-player market

Posting Doom Paul and other panic reaction images holds the highest chance of netting you some sweet ass karma. Because we all know that's all that matters.

Anyways, it's still being discussed, so no panic yet. How this will turn out is largely dependant on what Youtube is planning with Twitch, and how Google is going to meddle themselves into this.

Google, as we saw with Youtube, still has tendencies to fuck sites over and is determined to make Google+ work out in some way or another.

I can see them combining Twitch streams with Youtube, to make add a playback function where you can watch streams back more fluently through Youtube vids (instead of the low quality methods there are now available). A good thing, but odds are that Twitch streamers therefore need to connect their account to Youtube, by which the odds are that they need to connect to Google+ as well.

Wait and see for now.

Not to mention Twitch right now is considered Youtube's biggest competitor. Youtube's system for live streaming sucks ass so nobody uses it and goes to Twitch instead, it would make sense for Youtube to want to acquire a site that's so successful at what Youtube fails at. In a best case scenario if Youtube were to buy Twitch they could get the best of both worlds with Youtube benefiting from a good livestreaming layout and Twitch benefiting from gaining better video playback

Here, watch this video, it explains more about what it means for the streamer.

But other than that, WOOOOO GOOGLE+ INTEGRATION!!!

And then Google can boast: "Be happy that we can host the services in the first place and move on."

I think this could go over decently as long as Google doesn't try to implement their shitty dying social network into the mix. Of course, given how terribly Google has been running YouTube in spite of being one of the most technologically savvy companies on the face of the Earth, I could just be thinking a little too optimistically.

Companies are often out of touch with reality. They sometimes even make decisions that are bad to them even in the long run.

ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ FLEX YOUR RIOTS ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ

Could you cite some examples?

Please no.

@Twitch

It was said you would destroy the Googles! Not join them!

Because of layout changes, Google+, and Advertisements popping up before even being able to watch a video(and it feels like forever waiting for the ads to end). We don't want Twitch to have the same fate as YouTube.

and Advertisements popping up before even being able to watch a video(and it feels like forever waiting for the ads to end)

I hate to break this to you, buddy, but Twitch already has ads that play before you can watch any stream or any playback videos, and the streamer can't do anything to disable the ads that play when a viewer first joins the stream. Everyone freaks out about the ads on Youtube, but really I don't see those ads as any worse than they are on other sites. In fact, I can name plenty of websites that handle their advertisements much worse than Youtube does.

But only this time, there will be MUCH MORE ADS.

Cease and decist notices over fanworks. See Square Enix.

youtube is taking over twitch? don't you mean google because they already took over youtube.