The group must separate from the company that was already taken over in 2020. A new buyer for Giphy must be approved by the CMA.
The antitrust authorities had already instructed Meta in November last year to sell Giphy again. The group, on the other hand, went to court – and this ordered a new examination in the summer because the CMA had made procedural errors. According to the new report, Meta has given up on resistance. One is disappointed but accepts the decision as the last word, a spokesperson for the Financial Times business newspaper said.
The CMA sees the merger as a risk, among other things, that Meta may make it harder for Facebook and Instagram rivals to integrate Giphy’s animated images. The group may require Giphy customers like Tiktok, Twitter, or Snapchat to share more customer data with them to access gifs. The CMA (Antitrust Authority) pointed out that Giphy was also a competitor of the Facebook group in the online advertising market until the acquisition. The merger weakens competition between online services in the UK. A sale is the only way to allay worries.
Meta had already incorporated Giphy into the Instagram photo shoot in May 2020. The purchase price is said to have been over $ 300 million.
