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

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#421

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #159

sxg wrote: post #92

I'm dismayed by this acquisition but glad to see the near-universal dislike towards Adobe in this thread. How can a $150B+ company exist with this much disdain for its business practices and products? I'm guessing Adobe's primary customer base is large corporations who don't care rather than individual users?

In my opinion, largely because they own a bunch of industry standard formats, so any competitor would be forced to start by cloning one of their products. Once you've successfully done that, congratulations, you've conquered 4% of the market, in that one area (let's say a photo editor), and your software still seems broken (although it's faster, bugs get fixed quicker, and the UI wasn't designed by a crazy person or…

How would anti trust apply here?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#422

Post by asadlionpk » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

hmcamp wrote: post #411

I don’t believe this will be good for the market. I feel Adobe is doing this to kill a potential threat to their XD and other design tools.

I think XD is about to be killed.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#423

Post by butterlesstoast » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

Brace yourselves for Figma to be the next Magento like monolith that Adobe has no idea how to support : (

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#424

Post by aluminussoma » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:22 PM UTC

Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation organically (To their credit, their stock price soared through financial engineering). Adobe has instead augmented its capabilities through acquisitions. Today's acquisition of Figma is no different.

And maybe that is fine. Adobe is not alone. Many big companies can only expand their capabilities through acquisitions. Those big companies are doing fine.

Specific to Adobe, the acquisition of Macromedia was a huge success in part because it injected a lot of talent into Adobe that stayed and succeeded. Maybe Figmates will be able to do the same.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#425

Post by metadat » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

TimTheTinker wrote: post #410

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For one, Photoshop & Illustrator have a significant history and feature advantage on most competitors. But for two: "How can a $150B+ company exist with this much disdain" -- Have you looked at Oracle lately?

How does Oracle staff its engineering department with such a bad reputation? I once got an email from an Oracle recruiter, and I did not waste the opportunity to tell him how I feel about Oracle. Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Oracle or Larry Ellison.

Oracle is not homogeneous, there are cool teams and projects alongside the terrible ones. Don't mistake Larry Ellison as representing all of the 200,000 people employed by Oracle.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#426

Post by redocecin » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:23 PM UTC

Just realize that Evan had left Figma before https://madebyevan.com/figma/

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#427

Post by missedthecue » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

qwerty456127 wrote: post #68

egeozcan wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adobe is where software goes to die. After EA acquiring Westwood, Macromedia is the second biggest let-down of a sale in the software industry in my book. Perhaps Skype comes close.

Are there any examples when an acquisition actually led to improved value for the users rather than ruined or straight killed the product?

Minecraft. Ring doorbells.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#428

Post by arctics » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

This is normal for endgame capitalism, big fish eats small one.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#429

Post by yencabulator » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

Zealotux wrote: post #175

yuchi wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

UPDATE n. 2: Dylan Field (CEO of Figma) has addressed these kind of concerns on their public disclore of the fact: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/ Citing him: > Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. As others have said, there’s really a missing OSS version out there that can compete feature-by-feat…

>[ACQUISITOR] is deeply committed to keeping [STARTUP] operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to [NEW OVERLORD] You won't believe what happens next.

https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com/

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#430

Post by apozem » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

munbun wrote: post #348

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.

If it gets slower or clunkier, it will die. High chance Adobe increases pricing & wastes a year of engineering resources on integrating Figma with their Adobe Cloud over building useful features.

Figma will likely slow down.

In the short term, they've got to lay off redundant folks, join the new healthcare plan and learn how to work with lots of new stakeholders. All that comes before the actual engineering work of integrating into Adobe Cloud. That's a lot of organizational chaos, not great for shipping.

In the long term, I'd guess there will be a cultural shift away from speed. Startups are fast because if they're not, they die. Large corporations don't do that. Large corporations have enterprise customers and people who worry about liability and lots of politics. It's just a different mindset and set of pressures.