Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

figma.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

621–630 of 1001 posts

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#621

Post by tempsy »

tsycho wrote: post #549

[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new a…

Badly run startup valuations fell.

The good SaaS cos that are publicly traded are almost all closer to highs than lows.

The company is still likely worth at least $10B if not much more.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#622

Post by RickS »

tsycho wrote: post #549

[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new a…

(ex-Adobe, on a team highly related to an area where Figma out-executed XD, less knowledge about genAI stuff)

> Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma

GenAI/Firefly's success is in a totally different domain to what Figma's doing. Figma's equivalent at Adobe is XD, which has never held a candle to Figma. The existential problem Adobe tried to buy their way out of still exists in the same form at, if anything, a greater severity. I was at Figma's config conf this year and they're finally shipping stuff I tried unsuccessfully to get from the XD team _years_ ago.

> potentially, they might have been working on integrating into Adobe over the past year

Highly, highly unlikely. I have no insider knowledge of Figma, but Adobe's a grown up company and _really_ does not fuck around on the legal stuff (which is part of the basis of Firefly's success – significantly cleaner legal provenance on their training data). Everyone I've spoken to at Adobe says they've been kept at a long arms length.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#623

Post by Dylan16807 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #498
ajmurmann wrote: post #487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business. I'm general against mergers and think it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead, but if we do something, let's do it smoothly and right. That said, for mergers like that a ton of countries are involved which makes things even more co…

> Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]). It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry. […

I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.)

Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#624

Post by DoesntMatter22 »

dumbo-octopus wrote: post #574
tsycho wrote: post #549

[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new a…

> Adobe has probably captured back both mental and market share from Figma Unlikely. Based on the google trends [1], Figma sees around 10x more traffic than Firefly, but more importantly it experiences severe weekend drop-offs, meaning people are using it for work. Firefly on the other hand has a constant amount of attention, in line with people playing around with it but not committing to it for serious projects. An…

Things happen quickly and AI will change things quickly. Figma is nearly 8 years old and Firefly isn't even a year old.

Of course a massive tool is going to be bigger than a very new tool and there is a lot of momentum at companies.

The future is going to be AI/prompt based because it's a 100x speed savings. Who wins that pie is up for debate but Figma as it stands right now is very disruptable.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#625

Post by jamiek88 »

matthewowen wrote: post #554
Bjorkbat wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would argue that the regulators made their point pretty clear early on when the DOJ opened a lawsuit against Adobe. The people most responsible for keeping this in limbo were Adobe’s lawyers.

This is just straight up factually incorrect: the DOJ never filed a lawsuit to block this deal.

Have you mentioned at all in this thread where you are vociferously and borderline disingenuously defending your employer that you are in fact a figma employee?

Kinda relevant don’t you think?

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#626

Post by jzb »

ajmurmann wrote: post #566
consumer451 wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, maybe we could make attempts to regulate our market economy in order to prevent monopolies, and thereby encouraging competition. (aka, disruption) I didn't truly process the damage that monopolies can do until I heard this podcast with Sean Carroll and Cory Doctorow. There is a full transcript at this link if you prefer to read the conversation. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-c...

As I said, I'm quite happy with that, but if we do something, let's do it right and not half-assed.

When the powers that be decide to block a merger, they have to make the case. There's looking at the proposed merger and being able to say "this is bad and may be antitrust," and then there's actually making the case when it comes down to it. That takes time. And you can expect companies like Adobe to fight rather than just saying "oh, you don't like this? OK. We'll withdraw."

The DOJ and other bodies voiced opposition early on. They signaled quickly that they were not in favor of this. The interim between those actions and today were the regulatory bodies actively making cases against it and/or negotiating with Adobe & Figma how they could proceed in a way that the regulatory bodies would want to approve of the deal.

The whole idea that this was "half-assed" in some way is misguided.

Note that I worked for Red Hat while IBM was acquiring it. It took from (IIRC) October 2018 to July 2019 without strong opposition. When you're talking about companies that have that much impact on a market, it takes a while.

And it should -- the larger market doesn't benefit from waking up to find out that a major software supplier has been gobbled up overnight. You can see the pain that VMware employees + customers are going through right now and they've had a lot of time to process the idea.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#627

Post by jamiek88 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #593
matthewowen wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just straight up factually incorrect: the DOJ never filed a lawsuit to block this deal.

Your comments are straight up factually misrepresenting what happened. There were plenty of news reports early this year that DoJ was preparing to file suit against the merger. I guarantee they were in close contact with Adobe's lawyers, and the normal process here is that Adobe's lawyers/execs come back and say "hold up, let's see if we can make a deal" - that's essentially what happens in the vast majority of lawsu…

[flagged]

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#628

Post by Ensorceled »

Matticus_Rex wrote: post #576
xvector wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You're getting downvotes, but IMO it's because people don't realize how far outside the norm Lina Khan's stances and approach has been.

It certainly seems "outside the norm" if you compare to the hands off approach that has been taken the past few decades.

It's irrelevant anyway, Lina Khan's views were well known at the time of her selection, this is the desired outcome by Biden.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#629

Post by ramijames »

poisonborz wrote: post #595
ramijames wrote: post #259

I can not describe how happy this makes me. Fuck Adobe. I will never forgive them for buying and killing Macromedia.

Yes, but they will probably just sell to number 2 on the buyer list, who may not be much better than Adobe.

Have to be positive. Just about any company is better than Adobe.

Re: Figma and Adobe abandon proposed merger

#630

Post by jahewson »

tsycho wrote: post #549

[Pure speculation; I don't work in the UI space at all, and at neither of these companies] I wonder if Adobe is secretly happy about this. They were acquiring Figma at the peak of the market (for growth stock/startup valuations) because of the existential risks that Figma was threatening, due to their collaborative development UX. But since then: * Startup valuations have fallen. Ignoring regulatory concerns, a new a…

Adobe’s market cap is $272bn. They’re not sweating about $10bn
Post reply on HN