"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," Google's director of engineering Cathy Edwards said in a blog post. "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."
Tenor, a four-year-old startup, 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 said 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 match users' mood.
"Whether you’re using the Tenor keyboard or one of our other products, you can expect to see much more of this in your future," Edwards said.
Since launching three years ago on, 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
“A lot of people look at GIFs and see something fun and silly, but really what gets us up every day is that GIFs are a better way to convey thoughts, feelings and emotions at a time when attention has shrunk,” McIntosh said in an interview at Tenor’s San Francisco headquarters last fall.
“Beneath the surface, Tenor is really all about a new type of search engine -- one that’s emotion-based, that more than 300 million times per day, is matching people’s thoughts and emotions with a digital object -- the GIF.”
The company said the acquisition too help the company improve its product for users, developers and advertisers. Cofounder David McIntosh said he will continue leading the team at Google alongside Tenor cofounders Erick Hachenburg and Frank Nawabi.
"Tenor has been acquired by Google to help us execute on our mission to help all three billion mobile users find the perfect way to visually express themselves." McIntosh said in a blog post on Tuesday.
Tenor has quietly been building its advertising business since late 2017. The company has since done deals with dozens of major brands, which will pay up to $500,000 for sponsored GIF campaigns within its search engine. Domino’s, for example, could pay to feature a branded GIF of someone biting into a slice of pizza whenever a Tenor user searches keywords like “party” or “satisfied.” The more people search, save or favorite GIFs within Tenor’s engine, the more nuanced the “Emotional Graph” becomes and the faster Tenor becomes at serving people relevant GIFs.
Tenor’s engine learns patterns, for example, that if someone searches for “wink,” they will likely search for “flirty” five minutes later. It can also learn that someone only speaks in Harry Potter GIFs with a friend and Seinfeld GIFs with a parent. Speedy, pertinent search results are crucial. Tenor users usually spend just 20 seconds to search for and send a GIF.
One of Tenor’s key selling points is that users see sponsored GIFs because they opt to personally send them to one another, not because they were forced to view a display ad. Tenor had about 45 employees as of September 2017, and the company hasn't disclosed revenue figures.
While GIFs were first invented three decades ago and popularized by websites like MySpace, Imgur, Tumblr and Giphy, they have only been readily available within mobile keyboards for about three years. Now, about 70% of Americans ages 8 to 64 years old (about 200 million people) know how to send a GIF, and nearly half of those consumers send at least one GIF per week according to consumer research firm Magid Advisors. Magid’s President Michael Vorhaus said in an interview that it’s hard to precisely estimate how rapidly GIF-sharing can grow. However, in two to three years, Vorhaus says mobile shares of GIFs could grow by 1,000%, generating $1 billion or $2 billion in total annual advertising revenue.
McIntosh, 30 (and a Forbes 30 Under 30 alum), cofounded Tenor with Hachenburg and Nawabi in San Mateo, California in 2014 after seeing how the explosion in emoji showed consumers were willing to toggle between keyboards to communicate more visually. The cofounders had a hunch that video would make messaging more expressive, so they set out to create an easy tool to enable smartphone users to share video and animated clips without manually pulling GIFs from the web. Three years ago, when Apple started supporting third-party keyboards, McIntosh and Hachenburg debuted Tenor’s iOS GIF keyboard (Tenor changed its name from Riffsy a year ago in a push to improve branding). It was downloaded more than a million times in its first week.
Tenor has raised a total of $32 million since raising its seed round in late 2014. Most recently, Tenor raised $17 million in new funding through a Series B round announced this month (led by Tenaya Capital and joined by Redpoint Ventures, Menlo Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, among others).
