Internet
Facebook group Meta has got rid of clip platform Giphy
The Meta logo in front of the corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, California. Meta had to sell the clip platform Giphy – and lost many millions in the process. photo
© Tony Avelar/AP/dpa
The foray into the animated gif image business may have cost Meta a lot of money: the purchase price in 2020 is said to have been significantly higher than the selling price now.
The Facebook group Meta has managed the sale of the clip platform Giphy, which was forced by British competition watchdogs. The photo platform Shutterstock will pay 53 million dollars for Giphy, as announced on Tuesday. Meta should have lost a lot of money with the foray into the animated gif image business: According to media reports, the purchase price in 2020 was more than $300 million.
The British competition authority CMA finally decided last autumn that Meta had to part ways with Giphy. The group’s attempts to save the deal in court were unsuccessful.
The CMA saw the merger as a risk, among other things, that Meta could make it more difficult for Facebook and Instagram rivals to integrate Giphy’s images. According to the authority’s concerns, the group could have requested that Giphy customers such as Tiktok, Twitter or Snapchat share more customer data with Meta in order to access the gifs.