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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#451

Post by fblp »

baggiponte wrote: post #72
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…

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

Anyone here can lodge this simple form and I'd encourage you to do so. Especially if you think this merger will substantially lesson competition and stifle innovation lodge a complaint: https://www.ftc.gov/enforcement/report-antitrust-violation

At a minimum, they will investigate this and make inquiries (typically within months) if they see a high volume of complaints.

See https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui... For more info on the relevant law :)

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#452

Post by margarina72 »

jchw wrote: post #446

There is literally no direction this can go but down. If there wasn't enough evidence before, this seems to strongly suggest your only salvation from user-hostile corporate monoliths is community open source projects. So... Anyone want to build a multiplayer design tool? :)

you mean like PenPot?

Check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#453

Post by CharlesW »

aluminussoma wrote: post #424

Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation organically (To their credit, their stock price soared through financial engineering). Adobe has instead augmented its capabilities through acquisitions. Today's acquisition of Figma is no different. And maybe that is fine. Adobe is not alone. Many big companies can only expand their capabilities through acquisitions. Those big companies are doing fine. Specific…

> Adobe has been unable to find technological innovation organically…

In-house innovation is not the problem¹. What Adobe hasn't been able to replicate with XD or Illustrator is Figma's success with network effects related to collaborative editing and review.

https://research.adobe.com/research/

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#456

Post by jchw »

margarina72 wrote: post #452
jchw wrote: post #446

There is literally no direction this can go but down. If there wasn't enough evidence before, this seems to strongly suggest your only salvation from user-hostile corporate monoliths is community open source projects. So... Anyone want to build a multiplayer design tool? :)

you mean like PenPot? Check https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262

I assumed something like this didn't exist so hard that I never bothered to look. That's awesome.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#457

Post by xmonkee »

coldtea wrote: post #243
thomassmith65 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.

> except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.

I never curse on HN, but screw you, man. Nothing in my programming life has felt the way making animations and scripting them felt with Flash. You either missed out, or got suckered by steve jobs into thinking it's bad. It was overused, sure, but that's true of every new technology that's accessible and powerful.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#458

Post by hackitup7 »

So smart for both Adobe and Figma. Figma posed a serious threat to Adobe and it makes sense for them to do it. The losers are all of us poor sods who were happy Figma customers.

Just goes to show that if you want an outsized exit multiple the best way is to put a gun to a $100B company's head.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#460

Post by CharlesW »

city17 wrote: post #56

Figma's blog post title [0] being 'A collaboration with Adobe', when it's really an acquisition seems like a warning sign. [0] https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/

Agreed, that is very strange positioning. Clearly they understood how Figma users would take this news, but trying to obfuscate or spin it is a mistake.
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