Getty Images timeline

1993

Jonathan Klein and Mark Getty form Getty Investments in London

1995

March: Getty buys Tony Stone Images, a London stock agency

1996

April: Buys Hulton Deutsch, private collection of archival photography

May: Buys Fabulous Footage, provider of contemporary stock footage

July: Goes public on Nasdaq

Dec.: Ends year with $85 million in revenue, profit of $2.7 million

1997

Sept.: Merges with PhotoDisk in Seattle and changes name to Getty Images

1999

March: Announces move to Seattle

Sept.: Buys Image Bank from Kodak for $183 million

May: Pays $135 million for Art.com, a consumer site offering posters and other art.

2004

Aug.: Buys image.net for $20 million

April: Acquires Digital Vision, estimated to be the world's third-largest stock-photography company, for $165 million

June: Launches online store on Amazon.com

Oct.: Lays off about 30 employees as it restructures; says it will end year with same head count as it had at the end of 2005, about 1,860 employees

2006

Feb.: Buys iStockphoto, a micropayment site, for $50 million.

April: Buys Pixel Images of Ireland for $135 million in cash

2007

March: Buys Scoopt, a Scottish company that specializes in citizen photojournalism

April: Buys its largest competitor, MediaVast, for $207 million

May: Buys Punchstock, a leading aggregator/distributor of stock photography

2008

Jan. 18: Hires Goldman Sachs Group to find a buyer

Jan. 31: Says it brought in revenue of $857.6 million and profit of $125.9 million for 2007

Feb. 25: Announces deal to sell company to Hellman & Friedman in San Francisco for $34 a share — a 39 percent premium over Friday's closing stock price of $24.45