Facebook in its effort to expand its Instagram business bought animated images platform Giphy for USD 315 million in 2020. The UK competition regulator wanted the deal to be reversed over concerns of market monopoly. However, an Austrian count recently approved Giphy ‘s acquisition in what appears to be a major boost for the social media giant.

Britain’s competition regulator said that Facebook should sell Giphy as the deal would reduce competition among social media companies and in display advertising. Facebook’s parent Meta immediately retorted challenging this ruling.

It is worth noting that the UK authority this month ordered Facebook’s Meta fined an additional £1.5 million (approx. USD 2.03 million) for breaching regulatory rules of the animated graphics startup after the CMA fined the group £50.5 million (approx. 68.4 million) last October over the failure to provide information associated with the deal.

Commenting on the recent ruling, Facebook said this was the first time a court had looked into the deal. The transaction is not significant enough to be examined at a European Union level.

Although the Austrian court gave a green light to the deal, it laid out certain conditions that are to be met, as per a short statement in its ruling on the case brought by the Federal Competition Authority.

The conditions included allowing competitors to access Giphy’s image library for five years and aid in setting up ‘a provider of GIF library’ within seven years.

A spokesperson from Facebook’s parent company Meta stated that they are glad about the Austrian court’s decision, which understands that Meta and Giphy together would improve Giphy’s product for thousands and millions of individuals, businesses, developers and API partners.

Meta stock market value decreased by 25% following its Q4, 2021 financial results, and Facebook's ad revenue is expected to decline by USD 10 billion due to Apple's new privacy feature.

Source: https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2022-02-07/austrian-antitrust-court-gives-green-light-to-facebooks-giphy-deal