this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2026
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212
Google kills Tenor GIF API, forcing changes at X, Discord, and more (arstechnica.com)
submitted 16 hours ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 58008@lemmy.world 10 points 5 hours ago

Whatever replaces Tenor needs to allow for more specificity in searching. If I search "lemur" and I see 3 orangutans, a chimp and a 12 gibbons, and maybe 1 actual lemur, I'm still happy to have simians, but I really needed a lemur, man. I was quite fucking specific in my search term. Had I written "monkey" but it showed me a series of apes, I wouldn't mind that so much.

Also, "cat on skateboard" has fuck all to do with a poorly staged video of a dog playing Tony Hawk's Pro Skater with a set of gaming bongos. Again, glad to see it, but where's my skateboarding cat??

[–] Mwa@thelemmy.club 6 points 5 hours ago

i remember tenor search results were freaky/crazy

[–] judgyweevil@feddit.it 16 points 9 hours ago

I bet they will introduce a sloppy AI gif generator

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 140 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

another one bites the dust.

https://killedbygoogle.com/

306 entries now.

[–] Fit_Series_573@lemmy.world 59 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

RIP Google Play Music. Have yet to find another streaming service who's algorithm knew me so well to discover new music

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 0 points 12 hours ago (2 children)

That one doesn’t make a lick of sense.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 12 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Are you new to the internet?

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 13 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

I am very confused

I guess it’s a stupid saying… why is it more stupid than I thought?

Al I’m saying is it makes no sense for Google to dump Google Music. It’s in their wheelhouse, it’s a natural fit for their infrastructure, it could have worked with YouTube.

[–] Uranium_Green@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Ahhh, that makes sense!

Your initial comment sounded like you were saying missing Google Music didn't make one lick of sense

Not that google deciding to shut down google music didn't make any sense

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

I’m in the camp of “relying on an algorithm to serve you music it wants promote is an awful thing” but people have been trained that reliance on algorithms telling them what to consume is the only option.

[–] village604@adultswim.fan 3 points 55 minutes ago (1 children)

It can be a bad thing if you rely solely on it.

But it's really not any different than finding new music on the radio.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 46 minutes ago

I’ve been of the same opinion about getting all of one’s music from the radio since I was very young, as well hahaha

[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 4 points 7 hours ago (1 children)

I mean, you're kinda describing what they actually did

Google music was less killed, more rebranded as YouTube Music (but they did launch new app UIs at the same time that were missing various features from the old ones,). I've still got the same library of music I uploaded in Google Music that doesn't exist in their standard library, and you can still upload today.

Being able to have my hundreds of playlists from over the years complete with all the obscure remixes and unreleased bootlegs on them, is pretty much the only reason I still use it over something like Spotify

[–] Zarobi@aussie.zone 0 points 3 hours ago

I don't trust Google not to nuke my playlist randomly for copyright... Especially my precious bootleg remixes that have been purged from the internet. I use EverMusic with Dropbox for that reason.

[–] nerdspice@lemmy.zip 6 points 12 hours ago

😂 I haven’t heard that phrase in a southern minute.

[–] huppakee@lemmy.world 25 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

Still mourning Google Reader, luckily we can find consolation i in that all those apps and services weren't strategically killed by an evil corporation.

[–] mesamunefire@piefed.social 11 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

Yeah i liked it too.

I self host freshrss which is better nowadays.

[–] zewm@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago

Discord needs to offer a setting that you can pick which gif hosting website you want to search. GIPHY results are fucking ass cheeks.

I’m literally just keeping a browser open with tenor and manually copying the gifs over to discord.

I wish it would at least let me switch from GIPHY search to anything else.

[–] GoatSynagogue@lemmy.world 19 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

The real problem was probably that Tenor was free, and Google didn’t see a way it could make money from a GIF API.

The author can’t figure out how a company can monetise an API? Monetisation clearly isn’t the problem here. It’s possible that they’re going to launch a new product incorporating this, or more likely incorporate it into Gemini.

[–] psycotica0@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

On March 27, 2018, Tenor was acquired by Google. The company has continued to operate as a standalone brand.

Wikipedia

Huh, well if you couldn't see a way to make money with it, maybe you shouldn't have bought it...

[–] adarza@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 hour ago

i'm sure that the site's acquisition was always about user tracking data and never about it being 'profitable' itself.

[–] artwork@lemmy.world 63 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (2 children)

Tenor was quick, great, and optimal solution. I liked it.
Google (Tenor) notified API Users around five months before June 30, 2026, the access restriction date:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46628926

Klipy is being offered as a direct alternative:
- https://klipy.com/migrate

Discord also migrated to Klipy about a month ago. Yesterday, I saw positive feedback in communities about Klipy's more accurate search.

[–] harrybo93@lemmy.world 5 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Worth noting that while Klipy is headed up by ex Tenor employees, Google has also heavily invested in Klipy.

At my community (The Gamers' Raven) we ditched Discord (when all the age verification crap started) in favour of Discourse and Fluxer (Discord clone, but open source and self hostable) and currently Klipy integration is offering a sketchy and vague pricing model that is looking like it is going to include ads.

So, that's the vein that runs through all of this. Google killed Tenor, funded a new startup that'll eventually likely be somewhere they can of course shove ads into.

[–] artwork@lemmy.world 2 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Thank you very much for more insightful information! Google has always been a changer, not a talker, and appreciate them!
Yet, may I ask why did you choose Fluxer over Stoat, and if the source of Google investing in it available?

[–] harrybo93@lemmy.world 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Source: Klipy themselves.

Why Fluxer over Stoat, there is a lot to unpack here, but self hosting was much more mature and well thought out with Fluxer. Docker support was way beyond Stoat, and development is proceeding at a much better rate with mobile apps, integrations etc. We probably answer a lot of the questions here: https://blog.gamerstavern.online/innkeeper/about-community-and-communities

[–] artwork@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Roger that. Thank you very much for the response and references!
I wish you safety, stability, and peace!

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 11 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Tenor was always slow for me and had shit search.

I didn't know it was owned by Google, but now that I do it makes complete sense.

[–] artwork@lemmy.world 0 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

May I ask what sense the "bad search" does in the scope of one of the most common and known advertisement business backed by their fundamentally crucial systems for search, statistics, and analytics?

[–] pulsewidth@lemmy.world 0 points 2 hours ago

I read your questions three times but I still can't tell what you're asking.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 28 points 15 hours ago (2 children)

Heads up that there is a self-hosted gif platform I've been tinkering on, original repo is here but it was more or less abandonded. I've been adding to it slowly here: Gifable.

The base repo was good, a selfhosted Gif hosting, but I needed more integrations so I've been managing my own fork for about a year. The largest one is a way that Matrix servers can integrate, so it now actually stands up a matrix server and can federate your gifs with other matrix users. The second item is adding Giphy support (I had Tenor as well... but guess I'll remove that), so you can alternatively search Giphy.

I won't say it's polished, but if Tenor is leaving a sour note in your mouth, having someone else hosting would probably be neat.

Screenshot:

[–] cecilkorik@lemmy.ca 9 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

Pfft, "not polished". Looks way more polished than manually dumping shit into a folder on my http server. Thanks!

Github sucks though, unreliable and headed to bad places. Considered mirroring or rehosting it somewhere with forgejo? Self-hostable, or there are some public options

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 points 12 hours ago

Thanks! Design was mostly the original creators though.

It is mirrored on my private Forgejo instance, github was the original choice if the first eng, I will think about migrating

[–] amgine@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

This looks interesting. I want to host my own discord alternative but gifs were what I missed most.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 2 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

Happy cake day! Yes San boat. Element was the closest thing I found to discord, but gifs were annoying. Getting this added to apps is the hardest thing, but it's mostly that how to I say "add this integration please" when it's only my one server

[–] solxix@pawb.social 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You should try Sable! It's way closer to discord than element is.

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 1 points 1 hour ago

It looks great, I will!