Mark Zuckerberg choked on Giphy

The Facebook group Meta will resell the GIF platform Giphy after the final decision of the UK competition authorities. After a second investigation, the competition authority CMA concluded that the group had to say goodbye to the company that had already been acquired in 2020. A new buyer for Giphy must be approved by the CMA.

The competition authorities had already ordered Meta last November to sell Giphy again. The group, on the other hand, went to court – who ordered a new investigation in the summer because the CMA had made procedural errors. According to the new report, Meta has given up resistance. People are disappointed, but accept the decision as the last word, according to a spokesperson for the business newspaper ‘Financial Times’.

Among other things, the CMA sees the merger as a risk that Meta could make it more difficult for Facebook and Instagram rivals to integrate Giphy’s animated images. The group may request that Giphy customers such as Tiktok, Twitter, or Snapchat share more customer data with them in order to access the gifs. The CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) emphasized that until the acquisition, Giphy was also a competitor of the Facebook group in the online advertising market. The merger weakens competition between online services in the UK. A sale is the only way to allay the worry.

Meta had already included Giphy in the Instagram photo service in May 2020. The purchase price would have been more than $300 million. (sda/awp/dpa)