Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has sold Giphy, a company specializing in short animations on the Internet, with a loss of around 260 million dollars following a decision by the British competition regulator (CMA).
The image bank Shutterstock announced on Tuesday that it had acquired Giphy for 53 million dollars while Facebook had, according to the CMA, paid 315 million in May 2020 to acquire it.
The British regulator considered that this operation risked harming online advertisers as well as users and ordered its sale.
Founded in 2013 and based in New York, Giphy is a leading platform for sharing gifs and other animated images, claiming over 700 million daily users.
Since the UK left the European Union in 2020, the CMA has proven to be one of the toughest competition regulators for big tech companies. Last month, she opposed Microsoft’s $69 billion takeover of Activision Blizzard, fearing it would kill competition in the booming online video game market.
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