About a month ago, search engine (and now many other things including YouTube) giant Google made a move to buy the popular video game streaming site Twitch.tv (previously owned and integrated with Justin.tv). The purchase has been finalized and we are already seeing major changes in the way Twitch operates.

After the popularity spike in gaming videos on YouTube, content creators wanted a solution to be able to have viewers watch them play games live and interact with the streamer. Twitch was one of the best options, just overall being a good platform with good quality video capabilities, and a good chat system. I have myself done livestreams on Twitch, and after using it I would never want to switch. Twitch is one of the top sites for network traffic in the world, I believe. YouTube unveiled a new live streaming capability. On the users end it is a great system. Imagine watching a YouTube video with live comments. However, it isn’t so convenient for the streamer to get their content up. I have personally attempted to do a YouTube livestream, and the only free solutions (mainly Wirecast) didn’t really work properly for me. I find that Twitch has many more good programs that support it. So, that coupled with the fact that Twitch has subscriptions (where you can pay so much per month to the creator, not to be confused with follows which are like YouTube subscriptions), many streamers simply stuck to what works best.

Google noticed this, and, wanting to make their livestreams better, bought Twitch. We are already seeing changes; video on demand content (livestreams saved for later viewing) is now being scanned by a Content ID system similar to YouTube’s. Many people are swarming social media about the matter. Allow me to quote @OfficialFIERCE on Twitter – “I give it about 2 weeks before Google tries to push Google Plus on Twitch TV,” referring to the controversial event in which Google forced all YouTube users to connect their channel to their Google Plus to continue commenting on YouTube videos. I totally agree.

So, where will Twitch end up? Users are skeptical of the outcome of these events, and many have already started searching for a new place for their live content to call a home.