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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#751

Post by alwillis »

dforrestwilson wrote: post #735
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…

Now would be a good time for the regulators to acknowledge that yes, Adobe is a monopoly, and to block this.

It’s not illegal to be a monopoly; it’s illegal to use your monopoly to profoundly disadvantage your competitors.

An example was Microsoft threatening to cancel HP’s Windows license if they bundled Netscape Navigator instead of Internet Explorer back in the browser war days.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#752

Post by random3 »

As an ex-Adobe employee (not a fanboy, no inside information whatsover) and a Figma addicted I'm happy for Adobe and Figma.

I also believe this was a logical ending. I was wondering and actively discussing what Figma means to Adobe and happy to be right on my expectation on the number. This is Adobe's largest aquisition (its Whatsapp moment).

Congrats to both. I wasn't the happiest employee, but I believe it's a great company for the creative kind and I wish both a good journey.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#753

Post by revscat »

oblio wrote: post #693
ortusdux wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find myself coming back to this Steve Jobs quote more and more: "It turns out the same thing can happen in technology companies that get monopolies, like IBM or Xerox. If you were a product person at IBM or Xerox, so you make a better copier or computer. So what? When you have monopoly market share, the company's not any more successful. So the people that can make the company more successful are sales and marketin…

Creatives also destroy companies. See NeXT or whatever the weird letter casing was.

To echo the sibling comments, this is incorrect. NeXT lives on today in every Mac, iPhone, iPad, and every other Apple device. When Apple bought NeXT they used it as a foundation for OS X, which went on to power every device Apple makes or has made.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#754

Post by clcaev »

HellDunkel wrote: post #695
adventured wrote: post #686

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe got the money in the first place via skill. Photoshop has been the leading photo editing software for a generation. Hundreds of companies over decades, some with deep pockets, have tried to knock them off and have failed. Figma didn't lose the money game, they sold out specifically to reap the money. The owners of Figma - where the profits tend to go in a business - are extracting at an epic scale. They sold ou…

They have not failed because they couldn’t get a great product out. They have failed because so many people are trained on Adobe products an just use those.

Yes. At an individual level, they ask the question: "Delay my deliverables a week or two in frustration as I retrain; or, pay $300". User by user, the decision is obvious: pay the ransom and move on with your life.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#755

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

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.

Sketch is ideal Fireworks replacement. I clinged to Fireworks for years after it was abandoned, and when I found Sketch, I never looked back. Every little thing that ever bothered me in Fireworks, they made just right.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#756

Post by ljm »

chasd00 wrote: post #704
prepend wrote: post #501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. For me, it was… Atlassian buying HipChat Salesforce buying Tableau Salesforce buying Slack Microsoft buying GitHub (sort of) Alteryx buying Trifacta Oracle buying Cerner

don't forget Salesforce buying Heroku. and i say that as a guy who makes his living with Salesforce.

Heroku has stagnated massively in the face of upstart competitors like Vercel, Fly and Render.

Even their new public roadmap shows little of significance, it might as well be in maintenance mode.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#757

Post by johnfn »

JoeyJoJoJr wrote: post #652
johnfn wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this analogy make sense though? Fireworks was, to Adobe, some third-rate app that Adobe had to acquire because they had acquired Flash, the thing they really cared about. Adobe certainly maintained Flash - anyone remember ActionScript 3? In this Figma acquisition, Figma is the main prize. They're not just going to leave Figma to languish, no more than they left Flash to languish. Eventually Flash did die, ye…

Adobe ran Flash into the ground. Flash was developing at such a rapid pace until it was acquired, and then quickly stagnated. Adobe too way too long to get Adobe Air performant and the tooling was abysmal. If Flash was in capable hands, it would have become a major player in the game development space, which is where most of its strengths were.

> If Flash was in capable hands, it would have become a major player in the game development space, which is where most of its strengths were.

I don't understand what you mean here. Flash WAS a major player in the game development space. Flash games were dominant on the web for something like a decade, and a large part of that was post-Adobe acquisition.

Yes, they missed the boat on mobile, but that was more a function of Jobs putting his foot down on anything vaguely Flash-related.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#758

Post by Mobius01 »

You know who should be celebrating? Sketch and InVision. Sketch has signaled a desire to go multi platform, which has been a problem for large corporate customers with mixed platforms.

InVision failed to standup their own UI design tool, but the collaboration suite is still good and they were starting to death spiral. This would be an immense opportunity for both to become the only viable immediate alternatives to the Adobe threat.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#759

Post by silent_cal »

happytoexplain wrote: post #691
silent_cal wrote: post #583

Surprised to see all the "hate" for Adobe. They provide an awesome suite of products only $55 per month. I've had nothing but good experiences with them. Is it wrong to pay for software when you get a truckload of value out of it? No other creative software even comes close.

Figma doesn't come close - it blows Adobe out of the water. I don't need a "suite", I need to design software. Figma lets me do that for $15 per month, and, from experience, is miles ahead of Adobe XD.

Okay, I doubt that is going to change. If anything you will probably start paying less per month

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#760

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #100
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…

Sketch only works on macOS, though.

Sketch cloud displays sketch designs quite well. I wonder if they'll be able to turn it into a web editor eventually...
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