Regulators score a victory against Meta - social giant agrees to sell online search tool Giphy - WRAL TechWire

By Brian Fung, CNN

Facebook-parent Meta plans to merchantability disconnected Giphy, an online hunt instrumentality for animated images, aft the UK authorities said it would unit the tech elephantine to unwind its acquisition of the service.

It’s the archetypal clip regulators person successfully breached up a portion of the exertion elephantine since Meta’s economical dominance began drafting antitrust scrutiny from officials astir the globe.

The last determination connected Tuesday by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) ends a drawn-out combat with Meta implicit the deal’s apt interaction connected rivals’ entree to GIFs, arsenic good connected arsenic the integer advertizing market.

Meta had gone to tribunal to support the deal, but UK officials mostly prevailed this summer, erstwhile a tribunal upheld the CMA’s uncovering that the Giphy acquisition could perchance trim contention by eliminating a rival successful online ads and by restricting third-party entree to Giphy’s GIF library.

Is Facebook breakup beginning? It whitethorn person to merchantability GIF platform

‘Final connection connected the matter’

In a connection Tuesday, Meta said it would judge the UK’s determination arsenic “the last connection connected the matter.”

“We volition enactment intimately with the CMA connected divesting GIPHY,” a institution spokesperson said. “We are grateful to the GIPHY squad during this uncertain clip for their business, and privation them each success.”

Meta added it would proceed exploring acquisitions, contempt the defeat.

For years, critics person accused the tech industry’s biggest players of seeking retired “killer acquisitions” of smaller companies. The acquisitions, they said, could entrench the larger players’ dominance by cutting disconnected imaginable competition.

In the United States, the alleged “buy-or-bury” strategy is astatine the halfway of a national suit aimed astatine forcing Meta to rotation disconnected WhatsApp and Instagram. The breakup effort by the Federal Trade Commission could spell to proceedings successful 2024.

The FTC has besides sued to artifact Meta’s acquisition of a virtual world exertion institution known arsenic Within Unlimited, arguing that the woody could springiness Meta further powerfulness to found a “virtual world empire.”

Meta is warring some lawsuits.

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