Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B • Hacker News Board

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#381

Post by apocalyptic0n3 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 2:54 PM UTC

afavour wrote: post #318

apozem wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Figma is going to die. It'll be bundled as part of the Creative Suite. It'll add buttons to quickly export your designs to PhotoShop or Illustrator or whatever. It'll probably get slower and clunkier. Not death, just... Adobe.

So a slow death, then. I'm old enough to remember when Adobe acquired Macromedia. They slapped some new icons on Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash etc. then completely neglected them until people abandoned them. I pray Figma fares better.

In this case, I think it will. Adobe has been trying to build their own version of Figma for like 5 years. If anything, this probably means the end of XD and maybe their web versions of Photoshop. The Macromedia acquisition was a little different – Fireworks was an inferior Photoshop competitor, Freehand an inferior Illustrator competitor, Dreamweaver was outside of their core business, Flash actually got decent support until the world itself moved on from it (and Adobe mistakenly believed it could survive as closed source), and the rest of the portfolio didn't have much value. In Figma's case, it's actually a superior competitor to XD and even Photoshop in a lot of use cases, and it's figured out the web-based design environment that Adobe has tried repeatedly to do with mixed results.

I'd be surprised if they decided to shutter Figma. Now... ruin it by adding a bunch of crap nobody wants like Adobe does with every other product? Pretty likely. But I don't think they'll do what they did to Macromedia. I could be wrong, though.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#382

Post by yellowpencil » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

brennvin wrote: post #231

sn0w_crash wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Does not look that hard to compete with or replicate” Then why haven’t you? Seems like a good opportunity to make a few billion now that Adobe has set a price. I hear this all the time on HN. And yet, this rhetoric never seems to follow through.

> Then why haven’t you? I found another product opportunity that will be faster and cheaper to build. That I believe I could out-compete Figma were I rich does not mean I _am_ rich. Thanks for the down vote.

Just my opinion, but your original comment comes off as comically dismissive of what Figma has done.

Adobe, a company with literal billions in cash and thousands of engineers, wagers 20 BILLION dollars that it is not easy to compete or replicate what Figma has done. In fact, they attempted to compete with Adobe XD and "lost".

The founders of Figma started working on the beginnings of it in 2012 (perhaps indirectly) and launched in 2016. They also raised 330+ million in VC money to make it happen.

I'm a bootstrapped at heart and love the idea of small companies outmaneuvering giant elephants but suggesting one could outdo Figma, with relative ease, just doesn't sound likely.

All that said, if you truly feel like you can, get out there and do it! Theres billions of dollars waiting for you.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#383

Post by denimnerd42 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 2:57 PM UTC

This is why I won't use SaaS products or orient my career into products that use SaaS.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#384

Post by ssharp » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

markdown wrote: post #184

GordonS wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use. As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I knew they would shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I knew other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to kill it feels so wrong :( I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a simi…

> I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff I still use it as my primary web/ui design tool and in fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye to it forever if I upgraded.

I thought I was one of the last Fireworks users and I gave it up a few years ago in favor of Sketch!

Once I learn a tool well enough to suit my needs, I really hate giving it up so it was a difficult transition. Probably why I never bothered abandoning Sketch in favor of Figma.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#385

Post by julienfr112 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 2:58 PM UTC

bongobingo1 wrote: post #118

Adobe can't eat penpot! https://github.com/penpot/penpot https://penpot.app/ https://help.penpot.app/technical-guide/getting-started/#sta...

Penpot is written in clojure, front and back. I'm not competent enough to know if it's good thing or a bad thing.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#386

Post by bearmode » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

>the difficulty in canceling a subscription

Never had an issue with this tbh, it's always very easy. Manage account > cancel plan.

Hell, if you subscribe but then cancel within the same day, they give you a full refund. I've abused this a few times if I just need to do something quick - sub, use it for a few hours, cancel, and it doesn't cost me anything.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#387

Post by josefresco » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:00 PM UTC

bradstewart wrote: post #300

josefresco wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We still use Fireworks! I open it every day, and it remains a decent vector and simple image editor. Back in the day we used to create our web designs in Fireworks and then (before we knew better) "slice" them to HTML and export using Fireworks. Even after we transitioned to building by hand, we still used Fireworks for things like creating mouseover menus. Bad news for Figma.

Oh man, I totally forgot about the slice-into-HTML stuff. Back before everyone decided table-based layouts were "harmful".

We used HTML tables for several years before fully transitioning to DIV based layouts. With CSS you could/can make tables flexible and that's all we needed for most responsive layouts.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#388

Post by whywhywhywhy » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:03 PM UTC

Honestly my disappointment in the Figma team will be immeasurable if they sell out to Adobe.

You took us all to a great place and threw us to the lion. Could have had customers for life but I’ll be canceling as soon as you transition over to Adobe.

What pains me the most is they could have easily been the ones to make Adobe obsolete if they had vision and values. In 10 years it would be a Nokia VS iPhone situation with us asking how Adobe became Nokia.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#389

Post by MisterSandman » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:05 PM UTC

enumjorge wrote: post #319

swyx wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Everyone always says this. They should ask the Instagram founders [1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2020-04-07/zuckerber...

To be fair, Instagram isn't nearly as Bloated as Facebook ever got. WhatsApp has also only had some annoying additions.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#390

Post by elliekelly » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:06 PM UTC

apozem wrote: post #272

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 don't think Figma is going to die. It'll be bundled as part of the Creative Suite. It'll add buttons to quickly export your designs to PhotoShop or Illustrator or whatever. It'll probably get slower and clunkier. Not death, just... Adobe.

Adobe is a fate worse than death. For software, at least.