This is not good news for Meta (formerly Facebook). The British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has finally decided that the company must sell the popular image platform Giphy.
Meta bought the American company Giphy, which runs a platform of the same name for sharing short animated images known as GIFs, in 2020 (for $400 million), but ran into problems a year later. At the time, the CMA ordered Meta to sell the company because it considered its acquisition to be potentially harmful to UK social media users and advertisers. The company has been developing its own advertising services, and its acquisition of Metou could mean it could dictate whether Giphy can be used on other social platforms.
At the time, Stuart McIntosh, chairman of the independent investigative group, told the agency that Facebook (Meta) could "further increase its already considerable market power in relation to competing social media platforms." A glimmer of hope for Meta dawned this summer, when the UK's specialist Competition Appeal Tribunal found irregularities in the CMA's investigation and decided to review the case. According to him, the office did not inform the Met about a similar acquisition of the Gfycat platform by the Snapchat social network. The CMA was then due to make a decision in October, which has just now happened.
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A spokesperson for Meta told The Verge that "the company is disappointed by the CMA's decision, but accepts it as the final word on the matter." He added that he will work closely with the authority on the sale of Giphy. It is unclear at this time what the decision will mean for the ability to use GIFs on Meta's Facebook and other social platforms.
