Not a fan of Adobe and not really a fan of Figma but they are things. Alot of people talking about Macromedia Fireworks and Dreamweaver etc in here is a bit curmudgeonly-old HN. That's forever ago now as far as web/design. Yes it was sad/and Adobe made a mess, but alot has changed since then that lead to the environment where Figma rose. Not to mention probably most of the audience of users that are really into Figma weren't even born when all the golden era Flash and stuff was going on. The youngins don't understand big business Adobe, and they probably don't like the 'vibe', but they also aren't totally against it if they can keep using the product they owe a lot of their career to.
They will be fine I think.
Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
571–580 of 1001 posts
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#572So 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.
> So smart for both Adobe The market aggressively disagrees with this assessment.
How can you tell what the market thinks about this decision when a company's stock price is a function of what is happening publicly at the company AND externally in the economy? How do you separate the 2 drivers?
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#573Surely this is terrible for competition?
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#574According to the FTC the law states that mergers are illegal when the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition or to tend to create a monopoly." Pretty positive this would lessen competition in design software and restablish Adobe as a monopoly. This merger should be blocked. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
Considering the instant response on HN was to upvote the open source competition and the fact many people are probably going to leave to go to a competitor because they hate Adobe. It probably doesn't lessen competition but increases it since a lot of competitors are getting sign ups right now.
The argument "but there are competitors" – that the very existence of other players in a market should preclude the blocking of acquisitions – is flawed and misleading.
For competition to strengthen a space, it needs to be meaningful competition. The goal for regulators should not be "more than one player in every category." It should be diverse product expression, improved customer utility, and most of all ZERO winner-take-all effects.
That last item (winner-take-all) is crucial to understand, and I'm sad that it is no longer a major part of economic discourse (as it once was when systems-thinking was more common). Winner-take-all effects often occur without an explicit monopoly, yet devastate the category and its adjacent categories.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can't think of any other company to which my relationship as a customer has swung so completely as Adobe. In the 2000s, their tools were unsurpassed, and I was happy to pay the premium prices they asked (though I'd skip versions to save money). When Creative Suite was discontinued, that was a pretty abrupt turn, as I had no interest in a subscription for software I only used for personal projects. And yet, I stayed…
> discovered it had gone subscription-only as well, meaning my entire photo library would now be trapped on my old laptop unless I paid a monthly fee forever. I empathize, but isn't all this the reason they would fork out so much for figma? I mean, people hated them for going subscription with the tools that used to be desktop, but they absolutely adore figma that has never been anything but subscription. It's confus…
> but they absolutely adore figma that has never been anything but subscription.
Doesn't Figma have a free tier? That changes everything.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 simi…
> I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff I still use it as my primary web/ui design tool and in fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye to it forever if I upgraded.
Same boat. Wondering what it takes to either VM Mojave or get a windows license and VM that. And this whole episode has made me definitely appreciate the merits of Windows backward compatibility as a feature...
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#577This 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…
I can't think of any other company to which my relationship as a customer has swung so completely as Adobe. In the 2000s, their tools were unsurpassed, and I was happy to pay the premium prices they asked (though I'd skip versions to save money). When Creative Suite was discontinued, that was a pretty abrupt turn, as I had no interest in a subscription for software I only used for personal projects. And yet, I stayed…
> their tools were unsurpassed
Why the past tense? Which tools have been surpassed? Have Photoshop been surpassed? I am genuinely curious here.
I take note of Capture One, but is it an "acceptable yet technically inferior alternative that I picked because I don't agree with Adobe business practices" (which I think is a valid reason) or a viable alternative even for someone who doesn't have a problem dealing with Adobe and their subscription model.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#578According to the FTC the law states that mergers are illegal when the effect "may be substantially to lessen competition or to tend to create a monopoly." Pretty positive this would lessen competition in design software and restablish Adobe as a monopoly. This merger should be blocked. https://www.ftc.gov/advice-guidance/competition-guidance/gui...
How much is this enforced though? Wouldn’t this make most mergers illegal?
I guess it all comes down to who defines what ‘substantially lessen competition” means
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#579It says a lot about the current state of the tech ecosystem when almost every acquisition is seen to be a death sentence for a product. What would a world look like where people rejoiced at these kinds of things? Well…we will probably never know, sadly.
Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B
#580OK now the field is open, just clone Adobe Figma, acquire $$$. Do they have particularly substantial patents?