Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge • Hacker News Board

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#11

Post by DannyBee » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:23 PM UTC

Ekaros wrote: post #9

No anti-trust here? Seems like their market share might be too unreasonable to me.

In the US this would not be enough - at a minimum, you'd have to show actual harm, like, for example, showing it has caused (or is very very likely to cause) higher prices for folks.

I don't know enough about stock images to say for sure, but a cursory glance suggests Getty has not been raising prices outside of the norm over time.

It would be a very hard case to win without a bunch of unfavorable data.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#12

Post by Raed667 » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

elpocko wrote: post #8

TMWNN wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this a defensive move, against AI taking over the stock image market?

Both of them already provide AI image generation themselves. https://www.shutterstock.com/ai-image-generator https://www.gettyimages.com/ai/generation/about

if you're going to get scraped anyway, might as well get paid

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#13

Post by animuchan » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:24 PM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #4

sexy_seedbox wrote: post #2

Feels like Getty has acquired all their big competitors.

Is this a defensive move, against AI taking over the stock image market?

Not sure it'll help against AI eventually taking over. They can't compete on price, and the quality ceiling for "generic corporate announcement picture of diverse people smiling" is very reachable for the current gen AI.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#14

Post by Clubber » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:25 PM UTC

Layoffs coming. The government needs to grow a spine and halt about 90% of these M&A's.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#15

Post by paxys » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:30 PM UTC

Clubber wrote: post #14

Layoffs coming. The government needs to grow a spine and halt about 90% of these M&A's.

The current government did exactly that, and we voted them out.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#16

Post by cloudking » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:30 PM UTC

Anecdotal, but I haven't bought a stock image since Stable Diffusion was released.

Edit: with Flux, you can't even tell the difference: https://blackforestlabs.ai/

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#17

Post by Clubber » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

paxys wrote: post #15

Clubber wrote: post #14

Layoffs coming. The government needs to grow a spine and halt about 90% of these M&A's.

The current government did exactly that, and we voted them out.

The current government is still the current government. Not sure how that applies here.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#18

Post by blitzar » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:39 PM UTC

TMWNN wrote: post #4

sexy_seedbox wrote: post #2

Feels like Getty has acquired all their big competitors.

Is this a defensive move, against AI taking over the stock image market?

The defensive move here is the sellers cashing out while they still have a decent valuation and taking their money elsewhere.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#19

Post by cynicalsecurity » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:44 PM UTC

The prices of photos sold by those services are insanely high.

Those businesses would be much more profitable if they lowered their prices significantly, but I guess the greed overshadowed their mind.

Re: Getty Images and Shutterstock to Merge

#20

Post by michaelbuckbee » Tue, Jan 07, 2025, 1:47 PM UTC

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #19

The prices of photos sold by those services are insanely high. Those businesses would be much more profitable if they lowered their prices significantly, but I guess the greed overshadowed their mind.

You're right and wrong.

While they're very expensive to me in my everyday life, they were originally 10x cheaper than the alternative: getting custom photography done for ads, websites, brochures, etc.