The story
Founded by Bruce Livingstone in 2000.1
The company was founded by Bruce Livingstone in May 2000, as iStockphoto, a free stock imagery website supported by Livingstone's web development firm, Evolvs Media. iStock pioneered the crowd-sourced stock industry and became the original source for user-generated stock photos, vectors and illustrations, and video clips. It began charging money in 2001 and quickly became profitable.
On February 9, 2006, the firm was acquired by Getty Images for US$50 million. Livingstone promised that the site would continue "functioning independently with the benefits of Getty Images, yet, very importantly for them and us, autonomy."
On September 18, 2006, the site experienced the first benefits of the new ownership: a controlled-vocabulary keyword taxonomy borrowed from Getty Images.
iStockpro was a more expensive version of iStockphoto that was never as popular. It closed in 2007, having become redundant after the acquisition by Getty Images.
On April 1, 2008, Getty Images disclosed, as part of its agreement to be sold to a private equity firm, that iStockphoto's revenue in 2007 was US$71.9 million of which US$20.9 million (29%) was paid to contributors.
Founder and CEO Livingstone left iStockphoto in 2009. He went on to co-found competitor Stocksy United in 2013.
In 2013, iStockphoto was rebranded as iStock by Getty Images, removing the word 'photo' to convey that the company offers stock media other than just photography, such as vector illustrations, audio, and video.
In 2020, iStock began offering weekly complimentary stock photos from its exclusive Signature collection, as well as monthly free illustrations and video clips.
From Wikipedia’s article on IStock, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4