I wrote about Getty Images being on the market last week. The price at the time was north of $1.6bn. The buyout price  turns out to have been $2.4bn. The guys at Hellman $ Friedman clearly weren’t reading this website when they went all in. What were you thinking!?!

Here’s some pap from the press release. From the Getty side:

“We are enthusiastic about entering the next phase of Getty Images’ evolution by partnering with Hellman & Friedman as we continue to provide innovative offerings to businesses and consumers in a very dynamic digital media environment.”

And the H$F MD Andy Ballard said the private equity firm will work to “realise the full potential of [Getty's] traditional businesses while furthering the evolution of Getty Images into a global digital media company”.

Can’t wait to hear how they’re going to do that. It’s certainly not going to happen by them continuing the aggressive acquisition model that has seen them acquire 50 companies in a decade, but lose serious market value over the past two year.

These guys are going to have to get out amongst the publishers, both big and super-small, and come up with a new business model. Some suggestions:
How about working with Google to rev share the yield on pages that also display ad-sense. Let’s call this one photo-sense. If a photo really does add value to an article, some ad-creative or a feature  piece let the traffic reward Getty.

On the other side, how about you let the amateurs (and pros) on Flickr tunnel through the Getty API and sell their wares straight to the  world’s photodesks.