A very bad operation for Meta

Parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta revend the platform for searching, sharing and creating animated GIFs Giphy at Shutterstock Image Bank. The amount of 53 million dollarsthe transaction should be finalized next June.

Meta (or the Facebook group at the time) had acquired Giphy in 2020 for what was then estimated to be around…400 million dollars. It is therefore a major loss for Meta, which had little choice.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has indeed imposed Meta to sell Giphy. In vain, the group of Mark Zuckerberg had appealed this decision.

The CMA reproaches them

For the CMA, the acquisition of Giphy by Meta was likely to harm social network users and advertisers in the United Kingdom, knowing that Giphy claimed more than 700 million users per day.

” Meta’s takeover of Giphy could allow it to limit other social media platforms’ access to GIFs, making those sites less appealing to users and less competitive. “

The British authority had also criticized Meta for having put an end to Giphy’s advertising activities following the takeover. A maneuver interpreted as a means of eliminating a competitor in this sector of online advertising.

Difficult start to the week for Meta

One ambition of Meta was to integrate Giphy’s services into Instagram. It falls into the water, even if within the framework of the transaction avec Shutterstockan agreement ensures continued access to Giphy content on the Meta platform.

This remains a very bad operation for Meta and in line with a complicated start to the week, after its fine of 1.2 billion euros in Europe and in connection with the transfer of data from European users to the United States .