Google Launches YouTube Gaming to Compete with Amazon’s Twitch
Must-Know Video Streaming Updates from Alibaba, Netflix, and More
Google continues to enhance its YouTube platform for gamers
Google (GOOG) has beefed up its efforts to make YouTube a preferred platform for gamers. A few days back, YouTube announced in a blog post that it will start providing live video streaming service at 60 frames per second. This is good news, especially for gamers who don’t want any lag or slowdowns when they stream live video game sessions.
More recently, on June 12, Google announced its YouTube Gaming app and website to allow video game enthusiasts to broadcast their video games to other people or watch other people play video games in real time.
Overall, YouTube is second only to Netflix (NFLX) in terms of the North American share of downstream Internet traffic. According to a report from Sandvine, Netflix accounted for 36.5% of downstream Internet traffic on computers and networks in North America in March 2015. As the chart below shows, YouTube was second in this segment and accounted for 15.6% of all the downstream Internet traffic in North America. Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes, Facebook (FB), and Amazon’s (AMZN) Amazon Video are some of the smaller players in this segment.
YouTube’s main competitor in the live video streaming market is Twitch
However, when it comes to the live video streaming space, YouTube is a smaller player. The largest player in this market is Twitch, which Amazon acquired for ~$1 billion in August 2014. We covered this acquisition in detail in our series Must-know: Amazon buys Twitch to take on Netflix and Google .
For diversified exposure to Google, you can invest in the Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLK). XLK invests about 3.63% of its holdings in Google.
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