Corbis, the second largest stock photography provider, bought recently Veer, the Canadian stock provider of visual elements.

Moving more into Getty's market share, Corbis will keep the Veer brand separated, they say...

Veer is a well known distributor of visual elements including stock photography, illustration, footage and very fine fonts. It runs also a shop with its own t-shirts and bags and other hip stuff for designers and creative people and has the finest catalogs showcasing their offerings.
Corbis, a company owned by Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, is a well known stock photography provider for editorial customers mostly.

Corbis will be segmenting now its businesses into four separate brands: Corbis, Corbis Rights Services, micropayment site SnapVillage, and Veer. In the past, when Corbis acquired other stock agencies, it integrated them into the Corbis brand.

This move comes after Getty introduced a multi-site strategy earlier this year following the acquisition of another royalty-free stock site - PunchStock. Getty now has three stock web sites: gettyimages.com, istockphoto.com and punchstock.com covering different markets and types of customers.

I was very surprised by this acquisition and I hope Veer will stay the same, just as great and useful as before.

Designers love Veer. Corbis better not mess with it and do some sudden changes. Actually, I don't know why Veer accepted to be bought in the first place? Oh well...

Read the Corbis press release titled Corbis Reaffirms Commitment to Image Licensing Market.
Yuck!