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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#321

Post by pier25 »

Kelteseth wrote: post #273
happytoexplain wrote: post #156

My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma. When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing a miracle. Software like this doesn't exist . It was the first design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years). And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.

You should try out Affinity Designer, the one time fee of 40 euros is a no brainer. I use it since 2017 for my UI designs.

I've tried Designer and I just hate how it handles groups. Illustrator seems to be the only vector software that does groups right these days.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#323

Post by lvzw »

javajosh wrote: post #141
lioeters wrote: post #55

I don't understand how this acquisition is not anti-competitive behavior. It was such a joy to see Figma's growth and technical innovation, and now it will just get eaten by the established power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Inc.#Anti-competitive_pr...

I don't think "the government" does anything unless someone complains. In this case, the process is to send a letter requesting a "Business Review" [1]. It's probably a "fill out this simple 30 page form, wait 2.5 years (max!) and then have your review request politely declined" situation, but I suppose it's foolish to complain before trying. It feels like one of those processes that costs lawyer money that another b…

This is not correct. There will almost certainly be a second request issued by the FTC or DOJ in this matter, and my guess is that it will almost certainly get challenged by one of those agencies. [1] In building their case, the agencies will reach out to users and competitors of the companies. Adobe and Figma know that this merger will certainly be contentious on antitrust issues, and I bet there is a large breakup fee that Adobe would have to pay for Figma if the merger was blocked for this reason.

[1]: https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#324

Post by [deleted] »

coldtea wrote: post #243
thomassmith65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.

> except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.

[deleted]

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#325

Post by archagon »

m12k wrote: post #187
bauripalash wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adobe can't eat penpot! That's the beauty of open source

It's kind of amazing to me that we've reached the point where using open source is not a matter of idealism, but rather risk management to guard against the threat of product regressions due to consumer-hostile takeovers.

"Always has been."

(Also: the threat of product pivots or discontinuations.)

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#326

Post by rchaud »

coldtea wrote: post #243
thomassmith65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.

> except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.

Ah yes, the famously crap Flash.

Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full developer team, myriad NPM packages, and an application deployment pipeline. All for a web page that won't even work in a few years' time when some script necessary for the page to work ends up getting removed from whatever template they're using.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#327

Post by lvzw »

baggiponte wrote: post #72
pembrook wrote: post #22

I’d put the odds at about 95% that Adobe will ruin Figma with bloat, 14 different “Creative Cloud” background processes, and hostile pricing models within 5 years. This is huge news for Sketch. However, to be honest, this is the type of acquisition that should be blocked IMO. Adobe is literally acquiring a direct competitor here. To me the consumer harm is pretty clear. Instead of a more competent org (Figma) growing…

Totally agree I don’t get why antitrust gave the okay to this…

The antitrust agencies in the United States (FTC and DOJ) do not proactively give approval for companies to merge. After official merger filings have been made (which they have not in this case), the FTC or DOJ have a process in which they gather evidence and determine whether they have grounds to challenge the proposed merger. [1]

[1] https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#328

Post by Tijdreiziger »

Bilal_io wrote: post #90
yuchi wrote: post #18

If true, congratulations for Figma founders, and a bad day for designers that were looking for a way to escape from Adobe. I don’t think that in the long term this will give Figma as an ecosystem any benefit — unless Adobe will keep it separate from the main Creative Cloud. This reminds me of the Trello acquisition. As a loyal Figma user I’m pretty sceptical of the future. Hope to be wrong. UPDATE: Looks like it is i…

Big win for the Figma team. Big loss for consumers who have benefitted from the competitive market. I really hope this incentives Krita, Ink, Gimp or other OSS to focus more on UI design features. I think there is a value for Adobe to add Figma to CC, Photoshop can fully focus on photo manipulation while Figma (perhaps merged with XD?) will be target UI designers.

> I really hope this incentives Krita, Ink, Gimp or other OSS to focus more on UI design features.

A comment in another thread mentioned Penpot https://penpot.app/

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#329

Post by gaws »

swyx wrote: post #218
tomaskafka wrote: post #134

> By bringing powerful capabilities from Adobe’s imaging, photography, illustration, video, 3D and font technologies into the Figma platform, we can benefit all customers involved in the product design process, from designers to product managers to developers. Figma’s community will ultimately have a continuous user experience across ideation, screen layout, interaction design and content editing, allowing product de…

for what its worth @zoink says they'll still be autonomous https://twitter.com/zoink/status/1570385560312909826 and he doesnt seem like the kinda guy to lie about it (even if this might change 1-3 years down the road)

> for what its worth @zoink says they'll still be autonomous ... and he doesnt seem like the kinda guy to lie about it (even if this might change 1-3 years down the road)

Dylan's tweet is bullshit. You know it. We know it. $20 billion (with a B) is a very good chunk of money, and Dylan has a golden parachute prepared when Adobe, "1-3 to years down the road," cannibalizes, rebuilds, and rebrands Figma into an overpriced and bloated monstrosity.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#330

Post by nlh »

itronitron wrote: post #317
happytoexplain wrote: post #156

My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma. When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing a miracle. Software like this doesn't exist . It was the first design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years). And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.

I never understood the appeal of Figma, or even it's use case. Can someone explain it to me?

If you're a UI designer and you work on a remote team, Figma makes it incredibly easy to both build and share your designs with your teammates. It runs entirely in a browser and was built from the start for sharing, so you can jump into a design file and see and share the latest work in real time.

It is to design as Google Docs or Sheets was to Word or Excel. No more passing around files - everything just works in the browser.

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