Veer is not your average stock photo site. With a mixture of licensed and original content under its control, Veer offers not just photos, but also illustrations, and fonts, as well as a collection of merchandise (clothing, decor, art supplies, etc.) geared toward creative professionals. The world's second largest stock photography company, Corbis, announced yesterday that it would acquire Veer for an undisclosed sum. Corbis intends to keep the companies operating separately.
Veer, which has offices in Calgary, Alberta; New York; Berlin and Düsseldorf, Germany; is the fourth largest stock photo company on the planet, according to Corbis. Veer actually sells some collections from the largest stock photography distributor, Getty Images, the main rival of Corbis (JupiterImages sits in third place). That seems unlikely to change, however.
Corbis' purchase makes sense for the company, which needs to bolster its online strategy to compete with Getty, which is about three times the size (in terms of revenue) and operates gettyimages.com, punchstock.com, and the very popular istockphoto.com. Veer operates in a different space than Corbis, targeting graphic designers as opposed to editorial customers like magazines and newspapers. According to Photo District News, Corbis is concentrating on four business divisions: Corbis, Corbis Rights Services, SnapVillage (micropayment stock photos similar to Getty's iStockPhoto), and Veer.
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