I am slightly more okay with Amazon buying Twitch than Google. I feel like Google wouldn't want to play nice with all the Xbox One integration Twitch has.
@corvak: As a retailer, they have bullied and attempted to bully many publishing houses, the Big Five included, into various (non-profitable for the authors involved) programs by such tactics as: removing buy buttons, disabling search meta-tags for specific items, creating abnormally long shipping times, etc. Amazon has also tried to bully publishing houses, the ones who have 'opted in' on their pricing.
Not to mention the working conditions that many of their employees out at the distro centers have to deal with; most inhumaine and some actively dangerous.
I'm a little pressed for time right now to go through and cite my sources, but a quick google search will point towards Amazon's sour dealings with practically everyone involved with their corporation, save the stockholders.
can't wait for our three or four megacorp future where all innovation and entrepreneurship has been squelched. oh well, at least Syndicate may come true.
Interesting that Twitch got like twice as much money for their acquisition than Oculus did.
Yup - Twitch is earning some income now (not sure if they've started turning a net profit yet) whereas Oculus hasn't actually proven itself financially. The former was a relatively a safe bet, the latter was a rather risky one.
@corvak: As a retailer, they have bullied and attempted to bully many publishing houses, the Big Five included, into various (non-profitable for the authors involved) programs by such tactics as: removing buy buttons, disabling search meta-tags for specific items, creating abnormally long shipping times, etc. Amazon has also tried to bully publishing houses, the ones who have 'opted in' on their pricing.
Not to mention the working conditions that many of their employees out at the distro centers have to deal with; most inhumaine and some actively dangerous.
I'm a little pressed for time right now to go through and cite my sources, but a quick google search will point towards Amazon's sour dealings with practically everyone involved with their corporation, save the stockholders.
I work in the software industry, and a number of my colleagues have also had less-than-kind things to say about the software development side of Amazon. It's basically a burnout factory. They grind their coders and testers to the bone with long hours and demanding workloads. Most of the people that I know that had gotten jobs at Amazon have since moved on from the company.
can't wait for our three or four megacorp future where all innovation and entrepreneurship has been squelched. oh well, at least Syndicate may come true.
I'm tired of every internet startup existing solely to be bought by one of the half dozen big fish that control the internet. However, as an avid fan of Amazon (I have probably spent $35,000 to $40,000 on Amazon in the last 13 years), I think this is a far better path than being bought by Google.
For one thing, Amazon has a history of knocking bothersome business models around. The middlemen in publshing for far too long have unnecessarily caused a huge increase over what a book should cost. Same with music and other forms of entertainment and information. Amazon has not backed down from pushing back against these places. I won't count on it, but I could envision Amazon pushing back against Nintendo trying to squash streams or recordings for copyright purposes and actually defending fair use.
Unfortunately, there also just isn't much on twitch.tv I give a shit about. I just want to watch people play games. Most twitch content is people being fucking obnoxious while playing them. I don't need to year you act like a mental case while you drool for attention. Just shut up and play your game, until you have something worth saying.
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