Meta Sells Giphy To Shutterstock at a Loss in a $53 Million Deal (cnbc.com) 19
The online stock-photo marketplace Shutterstock announced Tuesday it would acquire Giphy from Meta Platforms for $53 million, a significant loss for Meta, which acquired Giphy in 2020 for $315 million. From a report: The acquisition is an all-cash deal, and in an investor presentation, Shutterstock said it would maintain its full-year revenue guidance. The acquisition would add "minimal revenue in 2023," Shutterstock noted. The deal is expected to close in June. Shutterstock's shares rose nearly 2% in morning trading Tuesday. U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority had ordered Meta to divest Giphy in 2022, citing potential anti-competitive effects. The CMA disclosed it was probing the deal in June 2020. Giphy, which is a platform for searching for and using animated images in messaging apps, was well-integrated into Meta's ecosystem, and had been an acquisition target for the social-media company years before Meta acquired it in 2020.
Don't think of it as a loss (Score:3, Interesting)
It's amazing what you can do when there's zero anti-trust law enforcement.
Re: (Score:3)
The government sets limits on the acceptable viscosity of ketchup, so they are making my life better every day.
You laugh (Score:3)
Jokes aside if anyone wants to know he's referring to this [fda.gov].
Usually the reason for rules like this is to prevent somebody from selling watered down ketchup or calling something ketchup that isn't (e.g. mixing various additives until it looks like ketchup, but brother it ain't ketchup). This isn't usually a consumer protection thing (we don't really do that in America). It's because co
Re: (Score:2)
Giphy wasn't a potential competitor to Insta. Or snap. Or any other social media.
Giphy was a competitor to Imgur etc.
Good. Giphy is shit (Score:2)
They went from being the basic go-to for memegifs to 'oh you can't right click save' or 'open new image in link' for an unpredictably high percentage* of gifs.
(show meme-gif of stick figure person putting a gun in their mouth)
*to be fair, I haven't gone back to giphy now for years, except accidentally.
If we can't easily share your gif directly, what the FUCK is your point existing?
Oh, you don't want your 'content stolen' without attribution?
I'm going to guess that giphy didn't produce 99.9999% of the gifs o
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Isn't Giphy just a GIF aggregator? Do they actually have any IP?
Much as some people love those annoying animated GIFs, it's hard to see how the company can have much intrinsic value. I think Facebook was lucky to get 53 million.
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calm down bra
"Meta" stands for "Metastasize" (Score:5, Funny)
They keep losing weight (cash, talent, public opinion/confidence) - that's not remission, it's the cancer taking over.
Well done UK (Score:2)
This is mere pocket money for Facebook (yes it's FACEBOOK, not fucking Meta. Please call the turd by its real name). But what's important here is, Facebook comes out of this bloody-nosed. We need more of this, and we need a lot more of this states-side.
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yes it's FACEBOOK, not fucking Meta. Please call the turd by its real name
I know you think you're being clever but you're really not. https://find-and-update.compan... [service.gov.uk] All you're doing is creating confusion about who has been doing what.
We need more of this
No we don't. What we need is sane upfront reviews of mergers in the first place. The fact that it had to come down to a divestment requirement was an abject failure of the regulator who should have never approved the purchase in the first place. What is happening here is utterly dysfunctional.
I thought (Score:2)
giphy was part of MySpace?
Meta Didn't Lose Anything (Score:2)
Remember. Meta doesn't buy companies for no reason, it's all about data.
Over the last few years, Facebook likely made more than enough money off of the data they collected by Giphy images being embedded in other social networks.
As soon as they serve an image they can attach a cookie to it.
So while they sold the company for less than they paid for it, I'm betting the data made up the difference
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Over the last few years, Facebook likely made more than enough money off of the data they collected by Giphy images being embedded in other social networks
This. FuckedBook might have lost money "on paper" (which they'll no doubt use as a tax writeoff or similar), but they definitively made (and continue to make) positive revenue from this transaction with the typical privacy invasiveness they're known for.
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If they were making so much money off of the data brought by Giphy, why the hell would they have sold it ?
Shutterstock (Score:2)
My searches are filled with links to this horrible site. Looks like GIF searches are going to go into the pit of hell too.