Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/oct/18/facebook-meta-sell-giphy-cma

by Tomte • 4 years ago

159 177 4 years ago

theguardian.com

smcleod2• 4 years ago

Glad to see this. Now split up the whole company.

rvz• 4 years ago

Exactly. Also we need to do the same for Google, Apple, Amazon and Microsoft too.

pipeline_peak7• 4 years ago

Split up what, a declining social network for boomers?

You all love to point the finger at Facebook in this 90s evil Microsoft fashion. Well TikTok is erecting behind your back and they're no stranger to data selling and Chinesr govt affiliation.

webmobdev• 4 years ago

Credit where credit is due, Meta / FB identified early on that people are moving on to mobile and acquired WhatsApp and Instagram at the right time (WhatsApp and Instagram are extremely popular with the young).

simiones2• 4 years ago

At the very least, FB, WhatsApp and Instagram should be separate companies. And WA is the world's most popular chat app by far, so this is not some unimportant bit player.

parkingrift2• 4 years ago

Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. Force them to divest these companies, and then these companies can compete with each other in the open market.

Split up what, a declining social network for boomers?

Yes, definitely yes. Competition is good, yes?

ulfw• 4 years ago

So you wanna split up Google for owning Tenor too?

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-keyboard...

anycans• 4 years ago

I cant imagine having any issue with google being split up.

coldpie4• 4 years ago

I don't think anyone asking for Facebook to be split up would be sad to see Google split up, too. But the article under discussion is about Facebook.

drannex• 4 years ago

I know you weren't expecting an answer: But yes, split them up too.

parkingrift2• 4 years ago

So you wanna split up Google

Unequivocally, yes.

for owning Tenor too?

No, not specifically for that.

joshmanders6• 4 years ago

uhhhh yes?

smcleod2• 4 years ago

Yes?

petercooper2• 4 years ago

Regardless of the merits of the case, it's interesting to see that a UK watchdog is able to exert such power over a US corporation. There's more background here: https://taxjustice.net/2022/01/18/the-uk-is-breaking-up-face... – they seem to be giving Brexit the credit for UK regulators able to make independent decisions from the EU's own competition regulators

gambiting• 4 years ago

Which is of course complete nonsense and UK has had a competition regulator that was effective and able to operate independently of EU even before Brexit. Every EU country can set the rules what companies can operate in every member state and how, and obviously UK was always able to do this.

(For a simple example - look at France constantly fining and regulating US tech giants without having to ask Brussels for permission)

petercooper2• 4 years ago

Fair enough. I was just going off of what Nick Shaxson, who seems to be quite smart on such matters, said in that post. I'm a remainer myself, so to find any sort of "benefit" in Brexit is very rare indeed.. ;-)

vanderZwan3• 4 years ago

Willfully representing how the EU works is a longstanding tradition of UK media. The EU even has a dedicated page for debunking British tabloid media lies.

edit: sadly I can't find it now, newer post-truth issues like Covid-19 seem to drown it out in my search engines

p0pcult• 4 years ago

This has been going on since way before the internet--Texas used to have de facto veto power over public school textbooks, because the Texas Board of Education (or whatever it was named) was the single largest buyer of textbooks. If you're a big enough buyer, then you start to claim some amount of monopsony power.

tjpnz3• 4 years ago

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

How do the people writing this shite sleep at night?

Cymrukicks• 4 years ago

Quite easily on a very expensive bed they bought with that Meta money.

trinovantes• 4 years ago

What makes you think it's not written by GPT3?

colesantiago• 4 years ago

This is a huge win against Meta and Facebook, Bravo!

We need to also stop the Figma and Adobe sale as well, we cannot allow this anti-competitive sale to go through.

hunterb1234• 4 years ago

Why care what the UK has to say about US matters?

Especially about whether a social media company can own a meme gif repo...

There's got to be much more pressing matters for them right?

tjpnz3• 4 years ago

Why care what the UK has to say about US matters?

Because the UK could ban Meta from operating there if it didn't comply.

hunterb1234• 4 years ago

FB should call their bluff and tell them to spin up a version of China's great firewall and try to block people then.

I guess UK does already have a firewall with it's nanny-state porn filters though.

I can see it now, "All of UK blocked FB today because of meme gif service purchase" Great headline, wonderful use of regulation /s

Meanwhile you have actual problems going on and a crashing economy, but at least we prevented a meme service from being bought!

JumpCrisscross• 4 years ago

the UK could ban Meta from operating there if it didn't comply

They'd fine them. American courts generally recognize British judgements [1].

[1] https://harrisbricken.com/blog/recognition-of-foreign-judgme...

sofixa4• 4 years ago

Why care what the UK has to say about US matters?

Because US regulators are too lazy/corrupt/starved to do the job they exist to do. Someone has to reign in oligopolies amassing even more power and dominance, and it obviously isn't going to be the US, so whoever wants to step in, be our collective guest. This time it was the UK, next up is the EU Digital Markets and Digital Services Acts.

And yes, there are much more pressing matters, which others are dealing with. A competition comission doesn't have other duties than to block such obvious abuses.

hunterb1234• 4 years ago

Because US regulators are too lazy/corrupt/starved to do the job they exist to do.

Personally the fact that the US regulators aren't wasting time monitoring gif repo purchases is a good thing in my book.

Someone has to reign in oligopolies amassing even more power and dominance

Quite a hyperbole for a gif repo purchase. Can FB purchase Tenor then? Who could purchase Giphy, any other social media giant?

This is all virtue signaling because they know certain people will eat it up.

somehnacct37573• 4 years ago

It's funny that digital billboard space is the main reason they cite.

To me the much bigger threat was that Giphy had integrations into many other chat and messaging apps which Facebook also competes with. Buying Giphy gave them new insight into competitor usage. Facebook could see which chat apps you were using and who you were talking to on them. All they had to do was fingerprint the gifs you sent to your friends

i_have_an_idea• 4 years ago

you know they can already buy that data from ad networks, right?

simiones2• 4 years ago

What do ad networks have to do with the messengers I use? Few if any messenger apps actually sell ad space inside the app.

weird-eye-issue• 4 years ago

Source?

joshmanders6• 4 years ago

You know they're an ad network and that data is like gold to sell to their buyers, right?

aaronharnly• 4 years ago

The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy.

I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication.

Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategic (inter)national GIF reserves?

dingaling• 4 years ago

Surely this is a market issue. Give it sufficient time and someone will work out how to wrap a derivative around GIFs.

fknorangesite• 4 years ago

I'm gonna orchestrate a gif pump and dump via /r/memeeconomy. I bet I could make almost $256.

celim307• 4 years ago

Nfts?

Bayart• 4 years ago

Would transcoding GIFs to VP9 and repackaging them into WEBMs be enough to eschew sanctions ?

bombcar• 4 years ago

This is all the EUs fault. They were warned multiple times that they need to get home grown GIF supplies, instead of importing all their GIFs from the US or Russia.

And now that the pipeline for dashcam videos is gone, what do they have? Nothing but a few PNGs that they sadly try to animate in a poor imitation of a GIF.

(sarcasm gif goes here)

aliqot3• 4 years ago

that they need to get home grown GIF supplies, instead of importing all their GIFs from the US

As an Amish idk how to feel about this.

JKCalhoun• 4 years ago

Excuse me, I feel compelled to point out that it's FIG in France.

ch4s313• 4 years ago

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion.

To me this smacks of our leaders, broadly, in the West being too old and too far removed from how people operate and live in the world today. This is like Lindsey Graham, who was once on the senate technology committee, admitting that he had never sent an email in 2015. Truly mind boggling.

Karunamon• 4 years ago

This kind of barely surface level understanding by clueless bureaucrats (remember "a series of tubes"?) is generally what you sign up for when you ask for regulation in technology. It is the reason I am usually skeptical of such calls for legislation, because the end result could be worse than what we started with.

LocalH• 4 years ago

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion.

I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i... the phrasing is likely to be closer to "On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY."

saurik• 4 years ago

I am under the impression that this is kind of true, though, in that you might think of Giphy as a massive pile of user content under dubious or illegitimate licensing, but it actually (ridiculously) is a repository of exclusively-licensed content that is contributed by such groups as motion picture companies (and which is then also what kind of led to the downfall of the concept, as the existence of Giphy and its narrow catalog of official gifs OK'd by marketing and legal departments started to feel stale).

dimmke• 4 years ago

I laughed so hard when I read this. This is legitimately funnier than most things that are trying to be funny like sketches/standup.

lovich6• 4 years ago

It’s a library of content for a feature that’s considered table stakes for modern chat clients. If it wasn’t worth anything why would Facebook have paid so much for it?

rswail2• 4 years ago

When the NAFO have defeated the orcs in the current conflict, they will need a new enemy.

whywhywhywhy• 4 years ago

Still sad Electric Objects ended up selling to Giphy

maxdo• 4 years ago

Non sure why everyone is so happy to kill the remaining of big employer, in the crisis year. Facebook as social media kind is dying regardless of this giphy decision.

pipeline_peak7• 4 years ago

It feels like a scare tactic. They're picking on the ever decrepit Facebook to warn the others they aren't untouchable.

tehwebguy• 4 years ago

This is the funniest thing ever to me. Everyone who thinks about this for more than a moment realizes Giphy has never had any value at all. They might as well be licensing different types of burps.

somehnacct37573• 4 years ago

If you think about it for more than 2 moments you will see that owning Giphy allows Facebook to see which chat apps you're using (via the api key for the app's Giphy integration) and who you're talking to on them (by attaching an id to each gif similar to how tracking pixels work in email.) Most chat clients automatically load images, triggering the tracker.

This gives Facebook unprecedented visibility into the user counts, usage patterns, and social graph of any chat app with a Giphy integration. These apps compete with Facebook's own chat apps.

jeffwask• 4 years ago

But it's just gifs, lol roflface. The shortsightedness of everyone on this thread who are all just too happy to hand everything to monopolies.

camdat• 4 years ago

Could you provide an example of a competitor app that integrates Giphy? It feels like a lot of people _think_ this is the explanation, but the chat apps I use defer gifs to the keyboard.

causi• 4 years ago

Giphy's primary functionality is pissing off people trying to use Google Image Search to find an actual .gif file only to find nothing but silent videos pretending to be gifs.

Aissen2• 4 years ago

nothing but silent videos pretending to be gifs.

Actually a good use of tech, does google image search allow searching silent videos ?

nickdothutton• 4 years ago

We must not allow a GIF gap to develop.

brippalcharrid• 4 years ago

The best time to develop a Strategic GIF Stockpile would have been 20 years ago; the second best time is now. Horrors would await if our geopolitical adversaries gained the upper hand and had the ability to restrict our access to memetic weaponry during a time of crisis.

shubhamjain• 4 years ago

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it?

This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company. What if years from now, EU rules that Adobe's acquisition of Figma was illegal and it should unwind it? Perhaps, this is one reason why Microsoft is choosing to home-grow clones of Notion[1] and Canva[2], instead of acquiring them. Maybe that's the path big tech would be forced to take from now on.

[1] https://medium.com/geekculture/microsoft-loop-clones-notion-...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-announces-canva-comp...

tootie• 4 years ago

I wonder if Meta just isn't interested in fighting any more because Giphy isn't that valuable to them. Gif mania has ebbed. The court ruling is giving them a pretense to cut their losses and save face.

christophilus• 4 years ago

Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company.

I agree with your sentiment, but this seems like a good outcome.

beckingz• 4 years ago

So the repercussions are more competition and less large companies buying smaller companies and running them into the ground?

_aavaa_2• 4 years ago

No, the repercussion is that a country other than America is deciding whether or not one American company is allowed to buy another American company.

Then replace America which the country name of your choosing.

beardyw• 4 years ago

I think by "big company" you probably mean those who do business in other countries. Doing business in other countries requires you to be subject to the decisions of they make if you want to do business there. I think if neither was doing business in the UK (I can only dream) there would be no case to answer.

rchaud• 4 years ago

I take it you've read the judgement in full and are familiar enough with EU competition laws to dismiss the evidentiary basis of the court's findings /s

This has no more repercussions for "American tech" than any other US company that has a business and tax presence in the EU. The EU has previously ordered Microsoft to sell Windows without Windows Media Player in EU markets. Yet Facebook still saw fit to open an office there.

robertlagrant6• 4 years ago

The EU has previously ordered Microsoft to sell Windows without Windows Media Player in EU markets. Yet Facebook still saw fit to open an office there.

There's a difference between a build tweak for another market, and a non-US country reaching into the US and blocking an acquisition of one US company by another.

robin_reala• 4 years ago

Unfortunately, for recent historical reasons this is nothing to do with the EU.

mellosouls• 4 years ago

does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it

Its been a long time since the country of origin of an internet service like these mattered practically to the end-user, so no, no over-reach in that regard at all.

davidgerard2• 4 years ago

Because they operate in the UK. If they want to keep operating in the UK, they get to obey UK laws.

It's really pretty easy to understand.

There is no way in which this is "terrible outreach", it's literally "you want to operate in our market? obey our rules."

mathstuf2• 4 years ago

If Meta wants to not be subject to UK or EU rules, they could certainly stop doing business there…

Personally, I'm really tired of seeing good products get subsumed into these faceless conglomerates, watered down, then finally borg'd into some tiny feature in the corner of the main app. Plenty of good ideas get tossed in the bin by these companies because they don't make 7-figure revenues out of the gate instead of being allowed to make something that makes self-sustaining revenue as its own business.

If businesses are looking for a buyout, I'd appreciate some up-front notice that I'll have to look for another solution once their dream is attained instead of being slapped in the face with a "hey, we got bought, but we're sticking around!" to "uh, we lied, it's going away; you have a week to save any data, hope you're not on vacation" a few months later.

joshmanders6• 4 years ago

If businesses are looking for a buyout, I'd appreciate some up-front notice that I'll have to look for another solution once their dream is attained instead of being slapped in the face with a "hey, we got bought, but we're sticking around!" to "uh, we lied, it's going away; you have a week to save any data, hope you're not on vacation" a few months later.

Your upfront notice is not paying for the service.

If you use it for free, the chances of buyout are high and you'll get this issue. Companies that don't need the buyout don't ever have this issue.

rswail2• 4 years ago

You do realize that the US applies that the same sort of regulatory business processes for overseas companies that wish to operate in the US.

In fact, the US "reach" into overseas trading including banking and other business processes is much more intrusive than any EU or non-US business regulation of US companies.

mostertoaster2• 4 years ago

Exactly. People seem to be forgetting this most of all in this thread.

Though I can’t recall any specific times where the US blocked the acquisition/merger between two European countries.

coldpie4• 4 years ago

Every big tech company would think twice before acquiring another company .

Great! As an American, I'm thrilled there are governments in the world that still place people & competition at a higher priority than Mark's wallet. My government has completely given up on the idea of anti-trust enforcement.

imnotreallynew• 4 years ago

It’s a gif maker..fretting about anti-trust in this case seems a little bizarre to me.

profstasiak• 4 years ago

195 countries in the world. I want to become president of one just to force FB to acquire Giphy again

influx2• 4 years ago

Meta is getting creamed by TikTok and the market in general without the need for regulation by European bureaucrats that you haven’t elected democratically.

They could just as easy create regulations which are impossible for startups to follow that actually cement big tech into power unintentionally

If you want more enforcement, vote in government in your own country. At least we might be able to fix that later.

theGnuMe• 4 years ago

Should Meta refuse I imagine the UK would ban them from doing business in the UK.

rrdharan2• 4 years ago

What’s funny is they’ll end up selling it to some IAC-type conglomerate with a huge data brokering business, and far poorer security and privacy practices, but which will escape the eye of lazy regulators who will keep looking to target splashy American brand names to score political points.

groovybits• 4 years ago

far poorer security and privacy practices

Poorer than Meta? Is that even possible?

tfsh• 4 years ago

poorer security. likely so, Meta does have thousands of competent engineers, ensuring their data remains exactly where they want it to be

rrdharan2• 4 years ago

This is exactly the problem.

Plenty of folks who’ve worked at small startups that haven’t faced regulatory scrutiny can tell you about how poor the common data handling practices are relative to the major leagues.

e.g. unilateral write access (no multiparty approvals), no TTLs or deletion guarantees, overly broad access, stale / unmaintained ACLs, copies of production data all over the place, supply chain vulnerabilities, lack of mTLS / endpoint security, etc. etc.

The upside (for end users) of big brand names being big targets is they have a lot more to lose than your average startup that no one will remember when it folds and sells its data.

baby• 4 years ago

I’ve worked at Meta and I can imagine that other companies have worse security in general yeah. I think people here have a glamorous idea of how companies run security. Most companies don’t even have security teams.

Aissen2• 4 years ago

It seems CMA is also on track to block Microsoft's acquisition of Activision, which would wreak havoc into Xbox's plans.

sofixa4• 4 years ago

Good. Further concentrations of markets subject to vertical integrations shouldn't be allowed. It's never in the consumer or market's interest to have a vertically integrated behemoth developing content exclusive for their platform (be it Disney or Microsoft).

LatteLazy• 4 years ago

Given the enormous issues the Uk has with (lack of) competition, as a Brit I find this peak British politics.

jmyeet• 4 years ago

This story is just bizarre.

First and foremost, the time for objecting to an acquisition should be before it closes, not after.

Second, forcing a company to "unbundle" like this is really an antritrust action and the bar for that should be pretty high. Objections to acquisitions can be done on potential issues. De-merging a company should pretty much be based on actual not potential violations (IMHO).

Third, all of this is over Giphy. There are alternatives (eg Tenor). This is not a market any company (other than maybe Apple and Google by virtue of owning the platform) can dominate. There's no network effect like there is with WhatsApp or Instagram. This was not a large company. Giphy was miniscule.

Fourth, creating a GIF keyboard and support in your apps is pretty easy. I imagine this is what Meta is going to do instead. So what's been achieved exactly?

Lastl, government power and attention is limited. Please let's use it for something useful. This doesn't affect anyone. This doesn't help anyone. Let's do things that do.

iam-TJ• 4 years ago

The CMA did object [0]; in fact it made an order preventing Meta/Facebook from continuing but the order was ignored. Meta/Facebook was fined as a result [1].

[0] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...

[1] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i...

beauHD• 4 years ago

It's amazing how something as harmless as a .GIF gets weaponized by big tech and abused for things like 'sentiment analysis' and profiling of users. This is why we can't have nice things :(

skizm• 4 years ago

Is it also illegal if giphy goes back to being an independent private company, but then Meta leases their IP for like 9999 years or something? Or are there similar (the same?) laws that prevent an arrangement like that?

tinglymintyfrsh• 4 years ago

Don't take away my Workplace meme integration. :)

Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

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