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Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

unsplash.com

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Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#41

Post by danso »

Loved reading about their journey on HN. Here's a 5-year-old thread about their costs:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11519085

Unfortunately the original link is down (and I could not find an archived version). But here's relevant material from the comments:

> $18k is a lot of money to spend each month. Understanding the scale of Unsplash though can help explain the costs.

> So at a cost of $18k per month you are getting 30M pages served, 140M API calls, 2.2M background jobs and 143TB of bandwidth. That sounds like a lot of bang for your buck.

> The biggest chunk is the bandwidth charges from imgix. They do appear to be giving you a break on their published pricing, but not a huge one ($0.075/GB vs $0.08/GB). The CDN they are using appears to be Fastly, which also has a published price of $0.08/GB. So, there doesn't appear to be any overzealous markup on imgix's part.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#42

Post by jehb »

I'm going to instead see this as an opportunity for something better to emerge.

My biggest problem with Unsplash is that they did not use a standard license that would easily be compatible with a Creative Commons or open source licensed work. If I incorporated images from Unsplash, suddenly I couldn't say "you're welcome to do whatever you like with my work." In fact, they used to use a CC0 license, but then changed, because other sites were copying them. As a user, this was a feature, not a bug.

I would far prefer to see the community band together and produce an image sharing website with CC0 as the default license. Creative Commons image search right now is in need of some TLC from an engaged community.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#44

Post by liveoneggs »

css wrote: post #9

I was a contributor [0] to their second batch of photos (the first with user-generated content) when they initially launched under the name Ooomf because I love the philosophy of open-source. They even published an open-source photography book [1], which I was featured in [2]. It is very cool to stumble across my images across the web. The initial model was to receive a handful of user-generated photos, then handpick…

what were the license terms of the upload?

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#45

Post by css »

liveoneggs wrote: post #44
css wrote: post #9

I was a contributor [0] to their second batch of photos (the first with user-generated content) when they initially launched under the name Ooomf because I love the philosophy of open-source. They even published an open-source photography book [1], which I was featured in [2]. It is very cool to stumble across my images across the web. The initial model was to receive a handful of user-generated photos, then handpick…

what were the license terms of the upload?

https://unsplash.com/license

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#49

Post by petercooper »

voisin wrote: post #21

I am unclear why Getty Images would be interested, unless the purchase price was less than the cost of internally building its own loss leader open source image site that allows them to try to upsell to “premium” photos. Users have limited loyalty to any particular source of “free”. Getty presumably has a far larger library from which to pull images, so there can’t be any advantage to Unsplash’s library. I am guessin…

This article from 2019 might provide some clues: https://www.chron.com/business/texas-inc/article/Getty-Image...

It seems that one of Getty's biggest problems is that the variety of fresh imagery their customers expect Getty to have to hand has shot up while revenues have grown more modestly. Maybe Unsplash's library and base of contributors will actually provide some value in the long tail for their existing customers.. and it might be possible for them to offer that extended library to customers with existing packages without them really caring where it came from or that they could get it cheaper elsewhere.

Re: Unsplash is being acquired by Getty Images

#50

Post by momothereal »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #25

I could imagine tightening collaboration with Getty which could make sense, but once you let somebody acquire you, the game is over. No promise can hold. Can someone link me a list acquisition promises that new owners of various businesses broke in the past? There must be one.

The WhatsApp acquisition comes to mind:

1. Promise to not hoard and sell user data: https://blog.whatsapp.com/why-we-don-t-sell-ads

2. Get acquired by arguably the largest ad network and data hoarding giant

3. Proceed to flow user data to FB, forcing it down the throat of all their users

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