Facebook Buys GIF Website Giphy to Integrate With Instagram
Facebook Inc is acquiring Giphy, a popular website for making and sharing animated images, or GIFs, and will integrate it with its rapidly growing Instagram photo-sharing app, Facebook said in a blog post on Friday.
The cost, which Facebook and Giphy declined to disclose, was placed at around $400 million by news website Axios.
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The American Economic Liberties Project, a Washington-based antitrust advocacy group, urged regulators to investigate and block the acquisition.
“The Facebook-Giphy merger is just the latest example of the Federal Trade Commission standing by while Facebook and Google centralize control over online communications,” said Economic Liberties Executive Director Sarah Miller.
Alphabet Inc’s Google acquired GIF platform Tenor in 2018 and integrated it into its image search function, which Miller said undermined the competitive market Giphy had created.
“Now, Facebook is here to pick up the wreckage, and become even more powerful,” she said.