Facebook’s Giphy deal puts global concerns over data use and ‘killer acquisitions’ under the spotlight

MLex Market Insight · Facebook’s Giphy deal puts concerns over data use and ‘killer acquisitions’ under the spotlight

Introduction

Date: 19 June 2020. Duration: 20:54

Short, humorous looping videos that you can attach to an online message or a tweet don’t sound like something likely to prompt regulators to take on the world’s largest social-media platform. Yet Facebook’s May acquisition of GIF database Giphy is indeed shaping up as an antitrust test case centering on so-called killer acquisitions and Big Tech’s use and collection of data. What’s more, the probe into the Giphy deal launched by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority may even set the tone of the regulator’s post-Brexit approach to online deals.