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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#971

Post by pmayrgundter »

drawkbox wrote: post #627
time_to_smile wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So smart for both Adobe The market aggressively disagrees with this assessment.

Acquisitions from the acquirer side always tank the stock, the acquired always get a bump. The down market and the $20B spend is why it is down. From an ADBE perspective, this actually is a good long term move and shouldn't be such a hit. From Figmas perspective, I am sure this was one of their hopeful outcomes. If people here don't like the outcome, then I wonder if they know what type of game they support. This is…

I had a similar thought..

I figured the dynamic here is market gets a checkpoint where the acquirer has admitted they're moving into maturity and so switching from build to buy.

But my first check was MSFT acquisition of GutHub.. was up on the day. Nadella had been turning the ship for a while and MS was certainly looking revived by that point.

So, not always down. There are win-win acquisitions

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#972

Post by atomicfiredoll »

fblp wrote: post #450
javajosh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Anyone here can lodge this simple form. If you think this merger will substantially lesson competition and stifle innovation lodge a complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation At a minimum, they will investigate this and make inquiries (typically within months) if they see a high volume of complaints. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... "Some mergers change marke…

I'm happy to submit a form or complaint. I stopped doing business with Adobe years ago and this is the second product they've bought out from underneath me since then, the first being Substance.

That said, I don't know a ton about antitrust laws and imagine they need something specific. Does anybody have a clear idea what the actual breaches that I should be complaining about are?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#973

Post by fassssst »

ok_dad wrote: post #671
the_other wrote: post #631

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers. It's utterly fucked up that "so smart for the companies: the losers are the customers" is baked into the system we use to transact culture.

Somehow, the dynamic where a company is an organization of humans to be used to further some human cause was reversed, so now humans are elements of a corporation to be used to further the cause of the corporation. We've gone from running companies in service of humans to running humans in service of companies.

It makes sense if you replace “corporation” with “feudal lords” in your sentence.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#974

Post by veritas20 »

ulfw wrote: post #904
bears-n-beets wrote: post #648

As a current software engineer at Adobe, I was really disappointed when I got the internal email announcing this this morning. It's reminiscent of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the early 00s. Figma is the better product and Adobe knows it - but instead of using that to light a fire under them and work harder to create a better product, Adobe just used its deep pockets to make the problem go away. I was alre…

What a weird way of looking at things. Microsoft bought Powerpoint, bought Excel basically too. There wouldn't be an Office suite otherwise. Google bought Keyhole, there wouldn't be a Google Maps otherwise. Google bought Youtube. They couldn't win with Google Video. Google bought Android. etc etc etc This is how the industry works. In general.

In the examples that you site, the acquisitions were complementary additions. In this case, Adobe already has a competing product suite.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#975

Post by true_religion »

veritas20 wrote: post #974
ulfw wrote: post #904

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a weird way of looking at things. Microsoft bought Powerpoint, bought Excel basically too. There wouldn't be an Office suite otherwise. Google bought Keyhole, there wouldn't be a Google Maps otherwise. Google bought Youtube. They couldn't win with Google Video. Google bought Android. etc etc etc This is how the industry works. In general.

In the examples that you site, the acquisitions were complementary additions. In this case, Adobe already has a competing product suite.

In the YouTube example, Google already had in house tech. Google videos even continued to run for a few more years.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#976

Post by KptMarchewa »

jaxrtech wrote: post #880
epolanski wrote: post #870

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I count more software that has been ruined and/or killed by acquisitions than the one bred by those.

Would agree in large part. I think the ones that were successful, they're successful enough that you forget it was an acquisition. One off the top my head is Google Docs[1] which, for the longest time, I was pretty sure it was in-house tech. It's actually a number of acquisitions for the collaborative editor tech and then MS Office support. It seems now that most incumbents have enough cash to not care about being th…

Google Maps, Google Earth, Youtube, Android - all acquisitions.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#977

Post by chagaif »

71bw wrote: post #947
DecoPerson wrote: post #905

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PowerPoint, Excel, Keyhole, YouTube, Google Maps and Android could be significantly better. There’s no competition, which means they keep their users, which means they’re not incentivised to find those ways in which those products could be significantly better. Okay wait, Excel does have some competition now, with Google Sheets, and that can be seen in Microsoft’s recent push to distinguish Excel from Google Sheets w…

Android has no competition? I could swear there is iOS. Same with Maps - Bing, Here, Waze, Apple, Yandex even OSM provide their own maps. Do I fail to recognize a point you're making here?

That's barely enough competition...

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#978

Post by HelloNurse »

brokencode wrote: post #961
isnhp wrote: post #663

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe loses the game with their skill and use money to win it. Figma won the game with their skill but lose the money game.

It’s hard to say they lost the money game when they ended up with $20B.

They can definitely fund the development of a new good product with that kind of money.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#979

Post by erikpukinskis »

slt2021 wrote: post #508
hackitup7 wrote: post #458

So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers. Just goes to show that if you want an outsized exit multiple the best way is to put a gun to a $100B company's head.

Same with Nginx being acquired by F5 Networks. Nginx really ate their lunch and were rewarded handsomely for that

How was Nginx affecting F5’s business?

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#980

Post by cowuser666 »

tus666 wrote: post #851
bears-n-beets wrote: post #648

As a current software engineer at Adobe, I was really disappointed when I got the internal email announcing this this morning. It's reminiscent of Microsoft's anticompetitive behavior in the early 00s. Figma is the better product and Adobe knows it - but instead of using that to light a fire under them and work harder to create a better product, Adobe just used its deep pockets to make the problem go away. I was alre…

Isn't this how competition works? Big payoffs create massive incentives for people to create great products in the hope they will be bought out. Adobe may have "destroyed" one great product, but think of the hundreds of new ones they have incentivized to be created. People look at this all wrong and ignore the downstream effect.

It seems like the model here is just a series of temporary alternatives (if we're lucky, creating value isn't easy). But people need software to be long-term viable to invest in learning and locking into the ecosystem. Seems good for the founders though.
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