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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

#101

Post by toyg »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #60
drcongo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe could have thrown $40B at it and never made a product to rival Figma because it would have been riddled with Adobe Updater, Adobe Service Manager, Adobe SwitchBoard, AdobeARMservice and all the other crap they force on their users, and nobody would bother. They get away with this kind of user hostility for software they're entrenched in, they'd never get away with it if they were trying to challenge something t…

Yeah I hear what you are saying about services bloat, but the timing of today's XD discontinuance leaves me scratching my head. If this providing a web design / prototyping service was so valuable to Adobe subscribers that Adobe were willing to pay 20 billion for it, surely it must still be worth something to Adobe to prevent subscriber churn today. I don't get why Adobe would abandon a foothold in this corner of des…

You just have cause and effect the wrong way around, IMHO. Adobe might have tried to buy Figma precisely because they already knew XD was a dead duck. Announcing it before acquisition talks, however, would have strengthened Figma's hand; so they waited and pulled the plug only after that situation was resolved.

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

#102

Post by jorvi »

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.

> So what should their aims be?

The market should decide that. And somehow, “shareholders” (what a giant tent) are currently destroying corporations and thus markets in the chase of ever higher returns.

A good metaphor for a this as a whole is the Ultimate Ears Roll 2. For its time it was a really good Bluetooth speaker, punching far above its weight compared to competing Bluetooth speakers, but also within Ultimate Ears’ product line. There was almost no reason to go one or two product tiers higher.

In a healthy market, the other competitors would have stepped up, and Ultimate Ears would have improved their other products to create sufficient differentiation.

Instead, Ultimate Ears just discontinued the Roll 2 and replaced it with a relatively inferior product. In a rational market without shareholders this doesn’t make sense, but once you consider that the company isn’t optimizing for sales (good and/or cheap products) but for shareholder value, the picture fits.

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

#103

Post by Karellen »

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.

Before the Friedman Doctrine[0] (that is, that a corporation's only responsibility was to its shareholders) was put forward in 1970, and generally accepted sometime around the '80s, it had been held for centuries[1] that shareholder-owned corporations also had responsibilities to society and the general public, as well as to their industry and their employees.

Yes, they had responsibilities to their shareholders, but those did not automatically override literally any other consideration.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

[1] The Amsterdam Stock Exchange was founded for the trading of shares in the first real publicly-traded joint-stock company, the Dutch East India Company, in 1602. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronext_Amsterdam

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

#104

Post by mixmastamyk »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #58

I still don't understand (as a DAW author) how there are so many more people doing various graphics tasks on computers, and relatively speaking so few significant apps to do them with, whereas there so many fewer people doing stuff with audio and more than a dozen serious contenders for the toolbox.

Maybe big players are not as interested in the smaller market, and none of the industry players were able to get huge like Adobe did. At least big enough to create their own gravity.

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

#105

Post by burningChrome »

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…

> but did Figma even need to sell in the first place?

My two cents would be no considering they already surpassed and put both Sketch and InVision out of business. They were predictably emboldened to think if they were able to beat out two other competitors, and more and more enterprise companies are moving to their product, taking on Adobe or even sharing the lions share of the market with them wouldn't be that bad.

The fact the only remaining real competitor went all in and attempted to buy them was a clear signal Adobe saw them as a threat and were willing to clear out their bank vault to acquire them. Figma rightly played their hand perfectly and not only shut down the offer, but now have a clear path to being the sole software provider in a rapidly dwindling market.

My anecdotal evidence would be if you go on LinkedIn or any other job board and start looking at the job descriptions for UI/UX designers, none of them list Sketch, InVision or Adobe XD. Its 100% Figma now. At my current company, everything has been moved to Figma and we've even had several enterprise tools that we're using that integrate with Figma.

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

#106

Post by radley »

deaddodo wrote: post #15
s3r3nity wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> I think the better questions are: did Adobe _need_ Figma? (We'll see...) and why did Adobe overpay by so much? Because Figma would have undoubtedly rejected at or near market rates. And regulators were already iffy. Being overly generous, if it still will pay off for you in the end, is a good way to grease a lot of wheels. The best analogy is the person who offers to pay 25k over asking (in a market where that is a…

Figma actually did reject many offers at market rates. $20B was too good to pass up, particularly with the $1B cancellation fee.

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

#107

Post by gowld »

deaddodo wrote: post #17
asah wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Video was killed after the YouTube acquisition and YT flourished under Google.

YouTube was bought mainly because Google Video was failing as a platform. About the only thing it ever offered over YouTube were longform lectures and presentations. Combining the two platforms (e.g. allowing longer videos but using YouTube's social interface) just made YouTube better.

And because the owners of YouTube couldn't afford to run it, so it needed a wealthy investor.

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

#108

Post by jcheng »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #60
drcongo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe could have thrown $40B at it and never made a product to rival Figma because it would have been riddled with Adobe Updater, Adobe Service Manager, Adobe SwitchBoard, AdobeARMservice and all the other crap they force on their users, and nobody would bother. They get away with this kind of user hostility for software they're entrenched in, they'd never get away with it if they were trying to challenge something t…

Yeah I hear what you are saying about services bloat, but the timing of today's XD discontinuance leaves me scratching my head. If this providing a web design / prototyping service was so valuable to Adobe subscribers that Adobe were willing to pay 20 billion for it, surely it must still be worth something to Adobe to prevent subscriber churn today. I don't get why Adobe would abandon a foothold in this corner of des…

Timing wise, maybe they had long since decided they have no path to winning with XD, but were holding off on pulling the trigger until they had Figma in their stable.

I can’t guess what their reasons were but I have worked in and near teams that have given up on being competitive with their rivals (but “it’s part of a winning bundle”). It was extremely rough on morale for those teams and everything those teams touched.

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

#109

Post by iambateman »

I believe this is a minority opinion, but I love XD.

It (1) does everything I need, (2) doesn't do things I don't need, (3) is fast and (4) is easy to teach other people.

Considering none of this is true of other Adobe products, it's not surprising that the XD product felt "out of place" to their executives. I imagine several SVP's are quietly relieved to see XD hit the bin.

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

#110

Post by aravindet »

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.

The simple and unsatisfying answer is that the board is responsible for these decisions, and the board should be constituted in accordance with each company's articles.

My point is that there is nothing inevitable about the board representing the interests of shareholders alone. A typical company where the shareholders appoint most or all of the directors is not the only way to set up a board, and I'd argue that there are legitimate reasons to set up a company where other stakeholders (e.g. employees [1][2] or customers [3]) appoint directors.

Also, consider this: There is a risk/return continuum between bondholders and shareholders (through holders of various other convertible and preferred securities). It is always an arbitrary decision as to where to draw the line separating investors who get a say and those who don't.

So my view in all this is that as long as Figma’s board was appointed in accordance with its constitution, and the board members weren’t acting corruptly (e.g. bribery, conflicts of interest) or exceeding their authority under the company's constitution, shareholders should NOT get to challenge that board’s decisions. (IANAL; this is my view, not necessarily what the law says.)

p.s. A stock exchange may require that boards be primarily represent shareholders as a condition for listing; but this should not affect privately held companies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worker_cooperative [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumers%27_co-operative

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