Facebook has been fined after failing to provide enough important information to the UK competition regulator investigating the firm's takeover of GIF sharing platform Giphy. The Competition and Markets Authority launched a probe into the acquisition in June last year, shortly after the deal was announced, over concerns about a 'substantial lessening of competition'.
Giphy's user-uploaded library of animated images is already integrated and used widely by Facebook's family of social media apps but can also be used on other platforms such as Twitter. As part of the investigation, the social network was ordered to keep the two businesses separate until a conclusion was reached. Under the initial enforcement order (IEO), Facebook is also expected to provide the regulator with regular updates demonstrating its compliance but the CMA said the firm had significantly limited the scope of those updates despite repeated warnings.
