Meta gives up fight to get $400m Giphy buy approved

Meta has thrown in the towel in its protracted legal battle with the UK’s antitrust watchdog over the US giant's $400 million purchase of Giphy. After another ruling against it, the Facebook parent said it will sell Giphy as ordered. The nation's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) today outlined its continued concerns …

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you.

<img src=' thumbsup png'>

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Thank you.

icon...

[unimaginative]

Finally, competition authorities are doing their job.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well , sort of. I can't imagine anything more pointless, ephemeral and ineffectual than enforcing competition in Gifys business.

Still, it's the thought that counts, and I do applaud it. Hopefully it's a first shot across the bow.

[lglethal]

Past headline: Ad company buys upcoming ad company...

Whilst Giphy are known for their, well, Gif's. They had also started getting into the advertising space. Once you keep that in mind, them being gobbled by Meta makes a lot more sense. I mean it was either going to be Meta or Google, as neither one wants any new entrants in the online ad market that could harm their duopoly. Meta had probably slightly more reason as they could use the Gif side of things more readily than Google in their Facebook outings, but if Meta hadnt bought them, you could guarantee this article would be talking about Google being forced to sell them off...

Or perhaps not as Google seems to have more friends in the UK government than Meta....

[captain veg]

sorry, but...

A GIF is a file in a particular format, viz the Graphics Interchange Format, a lossless image representation.

It supports limited animation.

Giphy, so far as I can tell, flogs short video clips. I dare say that they are mostly MPEG encoded. Nothing at all to do with GIF, in fact.

Am I wrong?

-A.

[Jamie Jones]

Re: sorry, but...

I've never bothered with the site before. I just had a look. The few I looked at seemed to be real gifs.

The whole site seems to be full of 2 types of things:

1) The GIFS that went on websites in the 90's

2) The sort of inane crappy images that people post to twitter, because you give them smileys, they want emojis, you give them emojis, they want a 2 second looping clip of an idiot shaking their head...

sigh.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Wait a minute...

What makes a website that hosts short animations, often in breach of others' copyright, worth $400m?

(How much does Microsoft pay Giphy to put a(n often useless) GIF search box in Teams?)

[lglethal]

Re: Wait a minute...

The gif side of things was probably worth about $50m, if I'm being exceptionally generous.

Shutting down an up and coming ad company with the potential (just potential admittedly) to disrupt Meta and Google's dominance of online advertisement? Priceless... (or $400 million to be precise...)

[Phil Kingston]

"We will continue to evaluate opportunities – including through acquisition – to bring innovation and choice to more people in the UK and around the world"

or

"Screw you, we're just going to buy someone else overseas"

[imanidiot]

Delaying the inevitable

So Meta sets up an "independant" new company, sells Giphy to THAT company and in 5 years time sells it's own company back to Meta?

In any case, the goals of Meta/Facebook/Zuckerburg have been achieved, Giphy has been killed as a competitor.

[localzuk]

Buyer?

My suggestion for who should buy it? Twitter...

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

The lion that squeaked

Meta: we've analysed our position and feel we have so thoroughly disrupted an incipient rival to our advertising businesses that they'd be starting from scratch if we sold them, so we might as roll over.

Nice doing business with you, CMA. Better luck next time!

[Mike 137]

"Facebook’s legal team effectively gave the middle finger to the UK [regulator]"

I suspect the two fingered gesture would have been understood better here in Blighty.