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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

#51

Post by duxup »

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?

I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right):

"I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it came to that) as far as my requirement to do what is best for the shareholders."

In the case of that CEO, I believed him (i'm not usually inclined to do so). I could be wrong, of course he made a lot of money, but this guy really did seem like he really did like building companies so to speak and that was more a motivation than anything else. But in his case I think he was right, he couldn't seriously argue that he could likely provide a return to investors even for a decade or more than they could get taking the offer right then and there.

It is a problem I always worry about, good businesses are there to return value to the stockholders, it makes sense. But in the face of gobs of cash they must fold.... and so often poorly managed after that and some things are lost. It's a black hole in the free market.

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

#52

Post by drcongo »

ivanmontillam wrote: post #36
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…

I can also say Figma avoided Adobe going into "destroy mode" with a similar product. We recognize Adobe XD as incapable, but with Adobe's resources, they'd have thrown enough money until they achieved it. Of course there are exceptions: same cannot be said of Google Video and YouTube.

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 that's better and doesn't hate its users as much.

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

#53

Post by ActionHank »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #50
ActionHank wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You will never get confirmation or citations for this sort of thing. What you can do is think for yourself as a dev in that team, would you stick around?

> What you can do is think for yourself as a dev in that team, would you stick around? Are paychecks still coming in, and do I still have a mortgage to pay?

Most people move between jobs.

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

#54

Post by staplers »

jasim wrote: post #49

It is hard to believe that a company with the expertise of Adobe in graphics programming (Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Illustrator) cannot build a vector design program. Adobe XD was almost there, and they made some great decisions in nooks and crannies usually forgotten - like bringing in Chrome rendering engineers to build a subset of HTML and CSS for the plugin ecosystem. While there are hundreds of little d…

  It is hard to believe that a company with the expertise of Adobe in graphics programming (Photoshop, Premier, After Effects, Illustrator) cannot build a vector design program.
Not for the workers using those tools. Adobe has been coasting for a decade if not more. Probably difficult to see from the outside if you're not directly using it daily.

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

#55

Post by seanwilson »

I wish Adobe InDesign had more competition for desktop/print publishing as well. Affinity Designer/Publisher seems a popular alternative for Windows and Mac for a one-off cost.

Scribus is open source and runs on Linux but I found it hard to use and slow on a modest document. Does anyone know of other good options on Linux? I've seen some posts about Affinity running unofficially in Wine but it seems a risky choice. There's LaTeX but that's not for everyone.

Figma isn't open source but at least you can use the web client on Linux. I'm curious if Figma will even get into print design also, as it doesn't seem like they'd need to add that much to support the basics (like CMYK color model and exports for different printer color profiles).

Unfortunately, Figma, Adobe and everyone else have the broken incentives to make money by locking teams into expensive subscriptions via closed file formats and a family of products that don't play nice with products from other companies. I recall that Sketch had a documented file format, which Figma used so you could import your Sketch files into Figma to escape Sketch but you can't go the other way.

I'm not going be surprised when Figma gets less generous with their free plan in the future now that they have such a strong network effect.

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

#56

Post by drcongo »

jwells89 wrote: post #48
DHPersonal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that time between XD's inception and Figma's buyout attempt, hasn't Sketch caught up to Figma and become a decent competitor to it? I haven't used it in a while because my employer doesn't support it and my freelance work has effectively ended.

I don’t know how Sketch compares on the collaboration front, but I still use it a lot personally for three reasons: - It still has a one-time/annual purchase option available - It’s still offline-first, with a fully first-party-documented file format[0] (no lock-in) - It’s suited well for screen-destined vector graphics creation, whereas Figma has a strong prototyping bent to it [0]: https://developer.sketch.com/file…

Agreed. Our designers work in Figma and I hate it, the devs tend to import into Sketch because it's so much nicer to work in.

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

#57

Post by Mistletoe »

duxup wrote: post #51
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? I've worked a company that was profitable, operated well, growing ... but were sold and the CEO said (I'll get the words not quite right): "I fought for keeping independent and not selling, that's how I've kept that company and I wanted it to stay that way. But the offer was increased into the range where I didn't feel like I could survive a legal challenge (if it…

*good public businesses

Private businesses don’t have to do anything and is where you get some of the best companies that exist and care about their customers like Patagonia.

https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-gear/gear-news/patagon...

Maybe it’s the only way out of the enshittification death spiral because there are no shareholders to destroy the company to “create value” for.

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

#58

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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.

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

#60

Post by HlessClaudesman »

drcongo wrote: post #52
ivanmontillam wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can also say Figma avoided Adobe going into "destroy mode" with a similar product. We recognize Adobe XD as incapable, but with Adobe's resources, they'd have thrown enough money until they achieved it. Of course there are exceptions: same cannot be said of Google Video and YouTube.

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 design, offering a good enough service is still compelling when bundled when all their other products.

Three explanations I can come up with are: 1. Maybe XD was a huge cash hole / or massively underperformed in some other metrics, 2. If Adobe cant dominate a market they take their ball and go home, or 3. Maybe more charitably, Adobe bigwigs still like Figma and have some sort of personal incentives to walk off the pitch and offer their competitor a massive open goal.

Is this how corporations are supposed to act?

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