Facebook Could Be Forced by UK Watchdog To Sell Gif Creator Giphy

Facebook could be forced to sell gif creation website Giphy after an investigation by the UK competition regulator found its takeover could harm competition among social media companies and the digital advertising market. From a report: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an in-depth investigation earlier this year into Facebook's acquisition of Giphy, the largest supplier of animated gifs to social networks such as Snapchat, TikTok and Twitter, after identifying a number of concerns about the $400m deal which was struck last year.

The CMA said in its provisional findings that "our initial view [is] that the only effective way to address the competition issues that we have identified is for Facebook to sell Giphy, in its entirety, to a suitable buyer." The watchdog found that Facebook's ownership of Giphy, which it aims to integrate with its Instagram social media site, could lead to it stopping supplying gifs to other social media sites. Or Facebook could demand more user data from Giphy's social media customers to continue to get access to its gifs, increasing the company's already "significant" market power. "Millions of people share gifs every day with friends, family and colleagues, and this number continues to grow," said Stuart McIntosh, chair of the independent inquiry group investigating the deal. "Giphy's takeover could see Facebook withdrawing gifs from competing platforms or requiring more user data in order to access them."

I suppose it's too much to hope

[93 Escort Wagon]

... that Facebook could be required to kill Giphy.

I know Teams isn't alone in this, but Teams is what I'm required to have open all work day. And this so-called "professional collaboration" tool includes a button that lets people search for - and insert - giphy images into the chat stream. I get so bloody tired of people shoving those stupid animated images into the work chat... You can turn animation off, but then some other things sometimes don't seem to work correctly (which is weird, but hello Microsoft's software development team). Plus sometimes my lead inexplicably will use one of those damned gifs to answer a question...

Lawn. Get Off. Now.

Re:I suppose it's too much to hope

[bb_matt]

Slack has a /collapse command to hide all media, which can be quite useful.

But it all comes down to etiquette - the gifs belong in general chit-chat - when they start entering chat channels dedicated to the more serious side of work, that's a management/culture failure.

All it takes is communication amongst squads and teams - just a few simple "Hey, please don't post GIFs in this channel, #here is the channel you want for that."
Gentle peer group pressure works wonders, very few people want to look like an ass and those that don't care, probably don't belong in the team. They won't last long.

In short, it's a cultural shift rather than a "No animated gifs anywhere" slap down, which isn't good for anyones morale.
Sometimes those GIFs, used in the right place with the right "cleverness", can really make my day.

But sure, they hang around in a chat and get stale pretty damn quick, I'll agree with that.
The worst offenders is using that automatic option of just searching for a word and inserting the first GIF result, with no thought about how appropriate it may be.
I guess it depends on how intelligent your team is.

insert money rain gif

[nazsco]

this is nothing but a scam to give facebook some quick cash flow.

that service is garbage and only exist (and have users) because it is integrated on whatsapp and facebook.

the second fb have to sell it, they will spin off something else and use that, and the old service that they sold will be worth zero.

Re:

[MobyDisk]

only exist (and have users) because it is integrated on whatsapp and facebook.

Since we have moved away from standard protocols, something because "valuable real estate" when they get included in the "upload from ..." buttons in some other app. If Mark Zuckerberg wanted to hand 10 million dollars over to somebody, he would just tell them to register a web site, then have the dev team put a button on Facebook letting users upload pictures from that site. Put an ad banner on the site and *BAM* instant money.

Gone are the days where it was "Upload from FTP" and you supplied the address.

Sometimes ...

[PPH]

... things are most easily explained with an animation or video [youtube.com].

Jurisdiction?

[thegarbz]

It's one American company buying another American company approved by the American regulator.

I struggle to see how the UK competition watchdog can do anything other than blow hot air.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[91degrees]

To be fair, it does seem like this sort of thing might be seen as a bit of a barrier to companies operating in the UK. It's a ruling that will affect Facebook's operation in every country that it operates in based on just the UK's rules. Of course the rules are whatever the government says they are but generally the UK avoids this sort of judicial overreach.

That said, I'd have thought they could simply disable giphy in the UK as a means to comply. The UK competition regulator surely wouldn't be concerned

Re:

[thegarbz]

You didn't miss anything. The merger now being between UK companies is of no business to the UK regulator. Just because you do business somewhere doesn't give them a say of your processes in another country.

Now if Facebook is actually falling afoul of a specific antitrust regulation and affecting specific companies in the UK then they may have a case, but that's where legal jurisdiction ends.

The UK will need to show what law is being breached by Facebook owning Giphy, and I will happily bet a kidney that Fa

Oooo Ooooo oooooo

[SJ]

Do WhatsApp and Instagram next please!