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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#391

Post by cjbgkagh »

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.

VCs have just been given 20B new reasons to fund a new startup in this domain. Could result in a cornucopia of new startups.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#392

Post by Jasper_ »

scarface74 wrote: post #142
eurasiantiger wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe’s direct competitor is Adobe XD, which launched with practically no features and was slowly developed only to dwindle to death as a rarely used cloud service, while everyone does the important work in Figma. The parent comment is spot-on. Antitrust legislation needs to be invoked to prevent this acquisition from happening.

It amazes me that people posting on a YC controlled board whose entire purpose for existing is to fund startups long enough to get an exit - statistically most likely through an acquisition by a bigger company - wants to stop acquisitions. The funding environment for startups would be a lot worse if investors thought that the only way they could recoup their investments is through exits. Look how few of YC companies…

Many of us think the VC approach to business has perverse incentives and is fundamentally broken, with large exits basically demanding megacorp purchases, who then hand large dividends back to the investors behind the scheme. No matter who loses, the house always wins. I post here in spite of YC and pg, who I both dislike equally very much.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#393

Post by badsectoracula »

m12k wrote: post #187
bauripalash wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Adobe can't eat penpot! That's the beauty of open source

It's kind of amazing to me that we've reached the point where using open source is not a matter of idealism, but rather risk management to guard against the threat of product regressions due to consumer-hostile takeovers.

It always has been, where do you think that idealism came from? :-P

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#395

Post by elliekelly »

itronitron wrote: post #317
happytoexplain wrote: post #156

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.

I never understood the appeal of Figma, or even it's use case. Can someone explain it to me?

Yes, Figma’s appeal is that it was not owned by Adobe.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#396

Post by tootie »

lioeters wrote: post #55

I don't understand how this acquisition is not anti-competitive behavior. It was such a joy to see Figma's growth and technical innovation, and now it will just get eaten by the established power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Inc.#Anti-competitive_pr...

Acquiring a competitor isn't going to automatically trigger antitrust laws. For one, web design is so far from critical infrastructure that it's just unlikely to be on their radar. And secondly, there's still a ton of competition. Even if Adobe and Figma are the two leaders, there's still loads of alternatives available. You can still use Sketch or Canva or any of the all-in-one beginner tools like Squarespace.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#397

Post by rglover »

This shouldn't surprise anyone. Figma followed the typical path for a company/product taking on massive amounts of venture capital.

If you are shocked by this, please take note and stop investing in products and services (no matter how good) that are investment vehicles, not real businesses.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#398

Post by mrandish »

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 wouldn't be so sure anything will be similar to Adobe->Macromedia. That was 17 years ago and Adobe is a very different company today operating in a different competitive environment with a different business model. Also, Adobe's competitor to Figma isn't PS or AI, it's a newer tool called Adobe xD. Adobe has sunk a lot of effort into getting xD "right" but so far failed to make it competitive. This massive acquisition is Adobe admitting that the xD effort failed and giving up.

In recent years, Adobe's approach to mega-sized acquisitions has been to put the newly acquired company's management in charge of the relevant business unit, not the other way around. The users who should be worried by the news are those who love Adobe xD vs Figma (I assume there must be some). If the post-acquisition integration goes well, I'd estimate the chances at better than 50% that in a couple years former Figma management end up running Adobe's creative professional segment entirely (ie PS, AI, etc).

(note: none of this means you personally will prefer whatever the impact of that may be in any particular product.)

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#399

Post by bearmode »

rchaud wrote: post #266

For those interested in non-subscription, one-time payment alternatives, there are a few options: 1. Figma replacement - Sketch (1yr fee, updates optional, MacOS only) 2. Adobe Photoshop - Affinity Photo (Win/Mac) 3. Adobe Illustrator - Affinity Designer (Win/Mac) 4. Adobe InDesign - Affinity Publisher (Win/Mac) (I use this to create my indie magazine) 5. Adobe Animate - Tumult Hype (closest thing to Flash that we ha…

Those options are all great for non-professionals. Absolutely go for those if you're not using them for your job. Have to see what Adobe does with Figma before abandoning it, though

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#400

Post by nabaraz »

bearmode wrote: post #386
joshe wrote: post #379

This is probably the only tech acquisition that's ever made me sad. I just hate Adobe so much. The nightmare of their installer, the weird store with horrible designs popping up when you activate normal ui stuff, the difficulty in canceling a subscription, and the stasis in their product and ui. Oh and the sloppiness of Lightroom on mac with it's weird ui and that it didn't even import and manage photos well. I've be…

>the difficulty in canceling a subscription Never had an issue with this tbh, it's always very easy. Manage account > cancel plan. Hell, if you subscribe but then cancel within the same day, they give you a full refund. I've abused this a few times if I just need to do something quick - sub, use it for a few hours, cancel, and it doesn't cost me anything.

I did a trial of Creative Suite on my mac. When it was time to uninstall, I couldn't do that using Creative Cloud Uninstaller. Because, apparently I have to uninstall photoshop and other softwares from Creative Cloud App before uninstalling CC. I couldn't uninstall photoshop etc. because my login to CC App didn't work. So, I contacted Adobe, there was some issue with getting 2FA to my email for some reason. I had to reset my mac just to get rid of Adobe spywares.
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