Google Buys GIF Platform Tenor To Make It Easier To Find And Share GIFs

How often do you use GIF? It could be a way of expressing a feeling, a gesture or a remark. GIF is one of the basic tools most people add to their messages via social media platforms to help spice up their conversations.

Google has added the GIF platform Tenor among it’s list of acquisitions owned by the company. Tenor, a four-year-old startup that attracts about 300 million people per month to its GIF search tool, where more than 12 billion search requests are made per month. It will continue to run under the Tenor brand within Google. Google stated that the startup will help Google Images and other products that use GIFs such as Gboard chat to help the search giant show users “the right GIFs in the moment” that matches the users mood.

Google’s director of engineering Cathy Edwards said in a blog post.

“Most people now use Google Images to find more information about a topic, and to help them communicate and express themselves— case in point, we see millions of searches for GIFs every day. We’ve continued to evolve Google Images to meet both of these needs, and today we’re bringing GIFs more closely into the fold by acquiring Tenor, a GIF platform for Android, iOS and desktop.”

Since it was launched, Tenor has secured foothold in the steadily growing space of mobile GIF-sharing, where it also competes with Giphy. Tenor’s “GIF Keyboard” is the most downloaded app in its category on both iOS and Android, according to analytics firm App Annie, and over the past two years, Tenor’s average keyboard download ranking has been roughly twice as high as Giphy’s on iOS and Android. Tenor’s GIF bot is also the most-used chat bot on Facebook Messenger and its iMessage app is the no. 2 free app on Apple’s messaging “App Platform” behind GamePigeon.

Tenor first launched on mobile messaging with the debut of the first GIF keyboard on Apple’s  iOS operating system. Tenor is compatible across a range of messaging and social apps like Apple’s iMessage, Google’s smart keyboard app Gboard, Facebook Messenger, Twitter, WhatsApp, LinkedIn, Slack, Discord and kik.