What's Twitch? Gamers Know, and Amazon Is Spending $1 Billion on It

UPDATE (4:02pm): It's official: Amazon has purchased Twitch, following months of rumors that Google was looking to buy the video streaming company. Amazon says the exact purchase price will be $970 million in cash.

SEATTLE—August 25, 2014—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Twitch Interactive, Inc., the leading live video platform for gamers. In July, more than 55 million unique visitors viewed more than 

After months of rumors suggesting that Google was prepped to snatch up Twitch, word broke this morning that Amazon had crashed the party and was about to acquire Twitch themselves. Sure enough, the Amazon/Twitch deal is done. Our sources had 

For the uninitiated, Twitch is a platform for making and talking about videos of videogame play. About a million users a month record themselves playing videogames, while the rest — pegged at 50 million unique viewers in July — watch and comment on

Amazon said Monday it's buying video-streaming site Twitch for $970 million in cash, noting that in just three years it's built a platform that attracts millions of visitors every month. Google was reported to have acquired the site