https://on.ft.com/3obnFzL
Someone once mentioned in conversation that Mark Zuckerberg's only reason for acquiring Instagram was so that it would not become something significant. A killer acquisition, as they call it. Luckily for Zuckerberg and Facebook (or, Meta, as we are forced to called it now), that deal went through without any regulatory pushback. Much as the company's acquisition of Whatsapp...
But those days are over. The UK's competition regulator, the CMA (Competition Marketing Authority) has effectively blocked a deal for Meta's acquisition of GIPHY, an online search engine for GIFs.
Blocking the deal is a blow to Facebook (Meta) because it signals the end of an era when the company was able to make moves in a relatively unchecked market. All bets are on the table. Companies that seem to pose little to no competitive advantage are now being thought of as what they could represent (read: Instagram) if Facebook (Meta) were to own them. At 315M dollars, the deal would have represented another important consolidation for Facebook (Meta) to control the digital marketing space. Even though GIPHY does not run advertisements, and of course Facebook (Meta) is obfuscating its reasons for purchase interest in stating that GIPHY could never have competed with them on advertising, who is to say it couldn't have gotten there in the future... That is exactly the kind of scrutinizing questions that the CMA is asking, and will continue to do so from now into the future.
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