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Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

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Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#91

Post by duxup »

jampekka wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so. https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

I know..?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#92

Post by sgt »

m3kw9 wrote: post #71

For most people if you use Mac, I would use Freeform, which is included in the OS as your design till you really need all the power Figma like apps provides. You can do 80% of the stuff without the crap Web UI you are forced to eat

Or Keynote, which contains everything Freeform has.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#93

Post by juped »

jampekka wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so. https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

It's complicated, actually.

Usually when you hear this it's about something management or the board or whoever wanted to do anyway.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#94

Post by no_wizard »

graemep wrote: post #80
adamc wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense as things are right now. It's anchored by a bunch of court decisions that arguably subvert the public interest. Do I think Shareholder value should be all that drives corporations? No. But I don't think corporations should be considered people, either.

So what should their aims be? Who should decide that? The shareholder's could also fire directors who did not accept the best offer? I am not familiar with the US decisions you refer to, BUT the same thing would happen in the UK, for example, where I would expect the other directors and the shareholders to ensure a really good offer was accepted.

Why not let them be what they are? The most base level definition, a corporation is simply A group of people authorized to act as a single entity and recognized as such in law.

Even if you take a slightly more expansive take on that, there is nothing that inherently means a corporation should exist to maximize profit. Its minimally viable definition is pretty well understood: A legal organization of people to act as a singular entity and are recognized as such under the law, typically formed as commercial entities to transact commerce on their behalf.

I don't think that misses anything.

Anything piled on top of that seems like something that should be specific from business to business. Thats my general issue with the US courts siding with maximize shareholder value to the point its now seen as a decree.

Especially when such rulings tend to trounce majority shareholders by minority ones.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#95

Post by legitster »

I'm ultimately glad Adobe is not going through with the deal, but I can still kinda appreciate the irony in this.

Regulators made the deal hard to keep more offerings on the market. In the end... the consumers still lost the choice. They saved patient for it to get hit by a bus.

Still, Adobe, why? Why not figure out sooner that you need to kill of your app - maybe before trying to get your purchase of the competitive product through an anti-competitive review?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#96

Post by toyg »

jampekka wrote: post #85
duxup wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

A lot of people tend to not accept this plain fact that for-profits must maximize profit. It's literally illegal not to do so. https://www.wakeforestlawreview.com/2012/04/our-continuing-s...

If it were "illegal", the State would be actively prosecuting any executive not making money. That's obviously absurd.

Not maximizing shareholder value (which in itself doesn't necessarily mean profit, btw) is, at best, a breach of contract, a civil matter between private parties. Losing a civil trial doesn't mean having done something illegal.

You know how people say things like "I wish the fundamentals of coding/math/financial accounting/music/whatever were actually taught in school, everyone should know them"? I wish people also got a basic understanding of legal terms.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#98

Post by Rapzid »

mlyle wrote: post #67
jpk wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting guess, but citation needed.

Even if they didn't make business changes in anticipation of this... Imagine you're one of the top employees working on a product, and that your company announces it's going to acquire a competitive product to yours for $20B and replace your product with that product, and this is looming for 15 months. Are you still employed there in that group? Are you still an effective employee? How's morale?

Unless I had a really long history with that company and was happy to move to another team I would immediately ask for a raise.

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#99

Post by jcheng »

PaulHoule wrote: post #61
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? It’s pretty clear Figma in 5-10 years could make photo and video editing products that outperform Adobe and Adobe can’t even make one web product as good as Fireworks was that they killed so yeah no Figma has no need for Adobe. Figma has an outstanding engineering team you can tell just by using the app, Adobes dev team it’s questionable how much of Photoshop and…

I still use Photoshop because I know how to do a lot of things with it but I'd really like to have a similar app which is designed entirely around linear light. (It's not like the 1990s when I was always editing indexed color images) They are still keeping it relevant because of the generative AI features which I often use to touch up photos (remove a spot of grout from a brick wall, then add a row of bricks to cente…

> designed entirely around linear light

Can you say more about that? What is “linear light”?

Re: Adobe gives up on web-design product to rival Figma after deal collapse

#100

Post by no_wizard »

s3r3nity wrote: post #5
no_wizard wrote: post #2

Now Figma can become the de-facto choice for its software category and a merger was proved to be ultimately unnecessary for its survival and was a clear attempt at Adobe trying to buyout their competition because they can't seem to compete. I think overall this is a good thing. Adobe owning Figma isn't a great promise that it would be make Figma better, improve Figma in any way, nor keep Figma on the path of making h…

> I can't blame anyone for seeing $20 Billion dollars upfront and taking the offer, but did Figma even need to sell in the first place? It's a great question from a P&L standpoint, but like you said: the board of the company represents the shareholders, and it's likely that $20 billion was a number _far_ above what they viewed the company's value - therefore accepting that type of deal would've made 100% sense to max…

IPO is another way to return to shareholders though, as is making a profit and paying a percentage of those profits via dividends to shareholders, which any private company can do, or using those profits to do share buybacks.

There's any number of ways to benefit the shareholders.

Its not anything you said per se, I'm simply annoyed at the legal maxim that we must maximize shareholder value whenever presented to do so, as long as its not an illegal activity.

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