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

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#151

Post by pavlov » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #133

baggiponte wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree I don’t get why antitrust gave the okay to this…

Probably because anti-trust enforcement only seems to get involved when two already huge companies are involved.

Nah, they just have different rules for different huge tech companies.

FTC is blocking Meta’s acquisition of Within, the maker of a VR fitness app - an extremely niche product. Meanwhile Microsoft and Adobe seem confident that they can close on deals to buy Activision and Figma.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#152

Post by jbverschoor » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #36

Oh hell no. Adobe is where software goes to die. Which is big shame because Figma has been great, and had serious potential to turn into the first WYSIWYG tool that would actually generate code you'd want to use. But Macromedia software was also great, and now it's mostly non-existent. I'd love for this to turn out different, but I have very low expectations.

All

Development

&

Operations

Became

End-of-life

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#153

Post by blooalien » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:54 PM UTC

saos wrote: post #24

Fair enough. Preferred to stay clear of Adobe and their trash subscription model so naturally I feel some resentment. Was enjoying the competition and thought Figma was well ahead of Adobe to be honest. I hope the deal fall through NGL

> "Was enjoying the competition and thought Figma was well ahead of Adobe to be honest."

They were… That's why Adobe bought 'em.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#154

Post by GordonS » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

nayroclade wrote: post #54

Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…

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 similar fate, but I do think it's going to get progressively more expensive, harder to use, buggier, and generally be more user-hostile.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#155

Post by cyco130 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

Cool Edit Pro was one of my favorite programs ever. Adobe bought it and renamed it to Audition. I still can't believe how fast it went down after that.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#156

Post by happytoexplain » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma. When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing a miracle. Software like this doesn't exist. It was the first design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years).

And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#157

Post by jstummbillig » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

scrollaway wrote: post #112

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…

> This is huge news for Sketch. Why, do they have an online editor yet? As a cto/admin/manager/hiring person: Sketch is worthless for me because I don't have a Mac. But because of that, my company does not use it: despite designers working on macOS, if I can't run it to look at their work and actively comment/collaborate with them, it's not a useful workflow. Therefore instead we hire people familiar with Figma (sadl…

> Why

Because statistics. If you make one option less appealing (which is the presumption) all competitors will indirectly benefit, statistically, for various reasons, none of which might resonate with your specific personal needs.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#158

Post by tambourine_man » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:55 PM UTC

nayroclade wrote: post #54

Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…

Don't forget Freehand, which was, in many ways, superior to Illustrator.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#159

Post by pessimizer » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

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 filled with 30 year old cruft) because it doesn't seamlessly integrate with the rest of their suite.

Affinity seems to have made some penetration by copying/innovating on an entire range of their products, but that's a huge up-front investment to grab a tiny piece of the pie.

This is really a job for antitrust, but modern antitrust is just a circa mid/early 20c legend we tell children so they aren't scared that capitalism could get out of control and eat them.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#160

Post by scarface74 » Thu, Sep 15, 2022, 12:56 PM UTC

vouaobrasil wrote: post #87

garyclarke27 wrote: post #63

It’s a shame that the competition authorities don’t seem to have any interest in these type of acquisitions which destroys competition and harms consumers. Same thing happened with Architecture software eg when Autocad bought Revit - end result is extortionately priced software that many architects cannot afford because they are paid so poorly. Same will happen for graphic designers.

I actually think we need new antitrust laws that are a bit more proactive when it comes to super-massive companies like Adobe. Such companies have learned to be much more cunning when it comes to get around existing laws, and plus they have much more money than ever.

What do you think happens to VC investments when it’s harder for companies to be acquired?

If you were a founder and wanted to sell your company, would you want the government telling you that you can’t sell it for the best price?