The mighty Google's YouTube will soon own Twitch, the gaming video stream, after finalising a $1 billion buyout. The news comes from Variety who says sources close to the deal report it's near to a close.

There's no official word on the sale yet but it's thought that the deal was all cash. That will make it the biggest purchase YouTube has ever made. YouTube itself was bought back in 2006 by Google for $1.65 billion.

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Twitch shot up in popularity when Xbox One launched. The service lets users upload gaming footage with audio and video of them playing recorded using a camera. Twitch says that since its Xbox One app added broadcasting on 10 March nearly 23 million minutes of streamed gameplay have gone online. And if that wasn't impressive enough, more than 2.7 million minutes were broadcast from Xbox One consoles between 10 and 11 March alone. Twitch works for plenty of other gaming devices too.  

In March 2014 Twitch accounted for 1.35 per cent of all downstream bandwidth on North American fixed-access broadband networks.

Titanfall is the most broadcast game on Twitch with more than 10 million minutes aired from the game to date.

Expect an official announcement of the purchase to arrive soon.