Last Updated on 29/11/2021 by Sanskriti
According to the Financial Times, Meta — the firm formerly known as Facebook — is expected to have a big acquisition rejected by the UK’s antitrust authority.
According to the Financial Times, the UK’s competition authority is set to block Facebook’s acquisition of online GIF company Giphy in the coming days, escalating the watchdog’s assault on Big Tech.
According to the article, the Competition and Markets Authority is planning to cancel the Facebook-Giphy merger, which would be the first time the authority has revoked a Big Tech purchase.
It has not been disclosed yet when the statement would be made public but the CMA has been given the date of 1st December to announce their decision.
In May 2020, Facebook announced the $400 million acquisition of Giphy. A month later, antitrust officials in the United Kingdom and Australia stated that they were looking into the acquisition.
During the investigation, the CMA issued an initial enforcement order prohibiting Facebook from interacting with Giphy.
In August 2021, the CMA made a preliminary conclusion that the combination would be harmful to competition and that the most feasible solution would be for Meta to sell Giphy. The US social media company was penalized £50.5 million by the regulator in October for violating an order issued following an inquiry into its purchase of Giphy, a GIF platform.
In May of last year, Facebook purchased Giphy, a website for creating and sharing animated pictures, or GIFs, in order to merge it with its Instagram photo-sharing programme. Axios estimated the sale to be worth $400 million.
The CMA concluded that Facebook’s management of Giphy might offer it an unfair advantage over competing for social media services like TikTok and Snapchat which also utilize Giphy.
It further claimed that the deal will eliminate Giphy as a possible display advertising competition for Meta.
Click the link https://www.ft.com/content/662c8e3f-4909-4bec-9131-c0237bb4897d for detailed information
