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Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

theguardian.com

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Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#71

Post by theGnuMe »

shubhamjain wrote: post #32

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it? This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice befo…

Should Meta refuse I imagine the UK would ban them from doing business in the UK.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#72

Post by coldpie »

ulfw wrote: post #33
smcleod wrote: post #2

Glad to see this. Now split up the whole company.

So you wanna split up Google for owning Tenor too? https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/google-acquires-gif-keyboard...

I don't think anyone asking for Facebook to be split up would be sad to see Google split up, too. But the article under discussion is about Facebook.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#73

Post by mostertoaster »

rswail wrote: post #67
shubhamjain wrote: post #32

At first I thought Giphy might have been a UK company, but no. It's an American company founded in New York. Ignoring the merits of the judgement—ridiculous as they are—does no one sense terrible outreach in issuing a ruling on a merger about two companies which are in no way related to the country issuing it? This has terrible repercussions for the American tech economy. Every big tech company would think twice befo…

You do realize that the US applies that the same sort of regulatory business processes for overseas companies that wish to operate in the US. In fact, the US "reach" into overseas trading including banking and other business processes is much more intrusive than any EU or non-US business regulation of US companies.

Exactly. People seem to be forgetting this most of all in this thread.

Though I can’t recall any specific times where the US blocked the acquisition/merger between two European countries.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#74

Post by mostertoaster »

mostertoaster wrote: post #73
rswail wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that the US applies that the same sort of regulatory business processes for overseas companies that wish to operate in the US. In fact, the US "reach" into overseas trading including banking and other business processes is much more intrusive than any EU or non-US business regulation of US companies.

Exactly. People seem to be forgetting this most of all in this thread. Though I can’t recall any specific times where the US blocked the acquisition/merger between two European countries.

Whoops. I mean European companies. (Reading it now the us most definitely meddles with whole countries)

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#75

Post by blululu »

Bayart wrote: post #60
dingaling wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely this is a market issue. Give it sufficient time and someone will work out how to wrap a derivative around GIFs.

Would transcoding GIFs to VP9 and repackaging them into WEBMs be enough to eschew sanctions ?

No, Giphy, GifyCat, Tenor and pretty much every other gif distribution service has already done something like this from the get go. The GIF is just not well suited for large scale distribution when html supports elements that support non-garbage file formats. I would assume the current ruling is meant to cover 'gifs' as a broad term for looping short form video.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#76

Post by coldpie »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #56
simiones wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the very least, FB, WhatsApp and Instagram should be separate companies. And WA is the world's most popular chat app by far, so this is not some unimportant bit player.

>this is not some unimportant bit player Sure, but what about Google and Amazon, you don't think they're bigger threats that UK's limited resources should be focused on first?

Sure, break them up, too. That would be great. The article under discussion is about Facebook.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#77

Post by LocalH »

ch4s3 wrote: post #64
aaronharnly wrote: post #10

> The regulator said Meta would be able to increase its “already significant market power” by cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals, or demand more user data from them in order to keep using Giphy. I’m imagining a future in which Meta cuts off the winter supply of GIFs to the European Union, setting the populace into a restive period of incoherent communication. Perhaps the EU, UK, and US should establish strategi…

The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion. To me this smacks of our leaders, broadly, in the West being too old and too far removed from how people operate and live in the world today. This is like Lindsey Graham, who was once on the senate technology committee, admitting that he had…

> The phrase "cutting off the supply of gifs to rivals" may be one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life. I honestly can't believe someone wrote that in a legal opinion.

I would very much doubt that was the actual wording, that's most likely a paraphrasing by the author of this article. The final report is not released yet, but according to the summary pdf linked from https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/facebook-inc-giphy-inc-merger-i... the phrasing is likely to be closer to "On this basis, we consider that Facebook would also have an incentive to foreclose its rivals from access to GIPHY."

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#78

Post by pipeline_peak »

coldpie wrote: post #76
pipeline_peak wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>this is not some unimportant bit player Sure, but what about Google and Amazon, you don't think they're bigger threats that UK's limited resources should be focused on first?

Sure, break them up, too. That would be great. The article under discussion is about Facebook.

And my response to the article is that there are way bigger fish to fry than splitting up a dying social media conglomerate. Google and Amazon are far more powerful and dominant than Meta and you know it.

Sent from my Android phone through Chrome. BRB, I just got a package and I need to check my AWS config.

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#79

Post by detritus »

vanderZwan wrote: post #34
gambiting wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is of course complete nonsense and UK has had a competition regulator that was effective and able to operate independently of EU even before Brexit. Every EU country can set the rules what companies can operate in every member state and how, and obviously UK was always able to do this. (For a simple example - look at France constantly fining and regulating US tech giants without having to ask Brussels for permi…

Willfully representing how the EU works is a longstanding tradition of UK media. The EU even has a dedicated page for debunking British tabloid media lies. edit: sadly I can't find it now, newer post-truth issues like Covid-19 seem to drown it out in my search engines

*misrepresenting :)

But yes, you're otherwise entirely correct. Our country has been lied to for decades in this regard particularly. Well done them, I guess?

Re: Meta to sell Giphy after UK watchdog confirms ruling

#80

Post by baby »

groovybits wrote: post #42
rrdharan wrote: post #35

What’s funny is they’ll end up selling it to some IAC-type conglomerate with a huge data brokering business, and far poorer security and privacy practices, but which will escape the eye of lazy regulators who will keep looking to target splashy American brand names to score political points.

> far poorer security and privacy practices Poorer than Meta? Is that even possible?

I’ve worked at Meta and I can imagine that other companies have worse security in general yeah. I think people here have a glamorous idea of how companies run security. Most companies don’t even have security teams.
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