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Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

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Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#351

Post by jyunwai »

542458 wrote: post #309
blagie wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's a correct analysis. Adobe is very good at building software. It's not the problem. It's not that Adobe can't compete with Figma. It's that they don't want to. Adobe has a great engineering team and ships wonderful products. The problem with Adobe is that the business side is anticompetitive, exploitative, and sleazy. Buying Figma, they lose a competitor. Competitors have a nasty tendency to expan…

> Adobe is very good at building software. Is that actually true? XD attempted to directly compete with Sketch and Figma, and was not generally considered to be a success at that primarily because they couldn’t ship features fast enough to catch up.

At the same time, however, Adobe maintains products with no clear competitors due to their quality. This is especially true for After Effects (for motion graphics in videos).

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#352

Post by danpalmer »

dtx1 wrote: post #348
anthuswilliams wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds it might be like a hallucination. I've never heard of any "Domestic Bribery Act" and I'm unable to find one in cursory online searching. (In 18 USC there are prohibitions on bribing public officials, but that doesn't seem relevant here.)

Fascinating, i think you are correct. This website at least suggests that there are some other laws regarding domestic bribes: https://www.globalcompliancenews.com/anti-corruption/anti-co... But "Domestic Bribery Act" seems to be a hallucination. I have so far only encountered fake sources or links that don't exist, this kind of hallucination is new and unexpected. Thanks for making me aware of this, quite scary how…

Also FWIW, I'm in the UK and was likely dealing with a UK subsidiary of Adobe, so the laws would likely be different anyway.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#354

Post by airstrike »

matthewowen wrote: post #113
airstrike wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A bureaucrat will decide if you can exit the way you want to. It's not up to the bureaucrat but to the courts. The FTC doesn't "approve" or "reject" deals--it can just take legal action to try to stop a deal, but that still gets adjudicated either in a federal court or in an FTC administrative law court to a judge which is appointed independently. https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/merger-review https://www.ftc.gov/le…

True in the US, not true in the UK or EU.

Fair, I'm not as familiar with the UK/EU regulatory environment

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#356

Post by foz »

SnowingXIV wrote: post #225
madeofpalk wrote: post #6

Excellent news. I think there should be more products, more companies, and more competition. Adobe just buying up it's competition will only ever directly hurt consumers. See also, "Adobe says the FTC is looking into its subscription cancellation practices." https://www.theverge.com/2023/12/15/24003532/adobe-says-the-...

Got bit by this. It felt absolutely horrible to not have any recourse. We had a yearly adobe sign contract, it was based on a particular usage estimate and quite high. Called in weeks before the renewal and they said we missed the window to cancel. There was no option out of it. No escalation. Had to stomach a massive bill for of a product we weren't going to use.

One of the key functions of procurement: Checking for automatic renewal clauses in contracts and removing them when found. This is a red flag in many companies.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#357

Post by madeofpalk »

cantSpellSober wrote: post #277
madeofpalk wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once upon a time, digital product design happened in Photoshop and Illustrator. Then competitors like Sketch and Figma came out with a better product. This made Adobe create XD to compete, but it was unable to make a good product so instead they tried to purcahse their competition instead of making something better. 9 months after Adobe announced it was to purchase Figma (and 3 months before it hoped the deal would c…

Fireworks tried to fill the gaps between PS and Illustrator, but never got traction. > Adobe discontinued XD That was my understanding as well, hmm

Yet another example of Adobe purchasing their biggest competition and then shutting it down!

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#358

Post by evantbyrne »

rafram wrote: post #307
zpeti wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno, seems like there are massive risks to Figma as a business at this point with the developments in generative AI. I'm not that confident spending $17bn is justified if its going to take 10-20 years to make it back. Some generative AI startup could easily leapfrog figma. And Adobe already has its own massive trove of copyright images that it can use for much better generative AI. I think the last year has put a…

Generative AI isn’t useful without a good editor for humans to manually tweak and integrate the AI’s output, and Figma is essentially the only name in the game for that.

Sketch still exists and is not only very good, but in many ways better.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#359

Post by airstrike »

ThomPete wrote: post #246
barnabee wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way a company Adobe's size should ever be allowed to grow by acquisition. At a certain point that route needs to be cut off forever.

You don't measure this on the size of the company but on market share. By that definition of course it should be allowed. There are many powerful competitors in this space Canva being just one of them.

Canva is nowhere near Adobe. Adobe is the dominant software seller for creatives. Figma and Canva are the two only notable competitors to have emerged in the past 10 years or so. Doing away with one of them isn't better for society.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#360

Post by Nemo_bis »

danpalmer wrote: post #352
dtx1 wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating, i think you are correct. This website at least suggests that there are some other laws regarding domestic bribes: https://www.globalcompliancenews.com/anti-corruption/anti-co... But "Domestic Bribery Act" seems to be a hallucination. I have so far only encountered fake sources or links that don't exist, this kind of hallucination is new and unexpected. Thanks for making me aware of this, quite scary how…

Also FWIW, I'm in the UK and was likely dealing with a UK subsidiary of Adobe, so the laws would likely be different anyway.

The SEC effectively has worldwide jurisdiction, for something that relates to a USA-listed company. The tip submission form seems relatively lightweight. https://www.sec.gov/whistleblower/submit-a-tip
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