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Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

bloomberg.com

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Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#911

Post by connor11528 »

noelsusman wrote: post #599
connor11528 wrote: post #537

According 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...

The FTC uses the Consumer Welfare Standard to decide antitrust cases, which means they have to show that a proposed merger would cause tangible harm to consumers. If "reducing competition" was the standard then all buyouts/mergers would be illegal since they all necessarily reduce competition.

Consumer welfare standard is not a law enacted by Congress its just something a lawyer named Robert Bork that was rejected from the Supreme Court popularized in the 70s. It was pre-internet and couldn’t comprehend platform firms like Amazon that price below cost for years to win a market and kill competition

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#912

Post by connor11528 »

solardev wrote: post #876
connor11528 wrote: post #537

According 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...

Does the FTC even do anything anymore...? I can't remember a single significant enforcement action in my lifetime.

Ya the last big case was Microsoft. Antitrust is being revived after being mostly dormant for 40 years but Congress has never changed the laws executives and the judiciary have just chosen not to enforce them

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#913

Post by hzay »

I didn't know adobe was so hated. They're still my best example for software making. I'm not a designer, and three times in my life I've had design needs that I tried to solve using free (as in beer) software, and it just never worked well. Adobe always just worked and fast.

First time was a book that had to be made ready for publication quickly (InDesign - my intro to paid adobe software), second time was 4k video editing (here I truly tried so many alternatives, free & paid), third time was basic motion graphics (after effects is brilliant and easy). Their software costs a lot of money though -- maybe their payment plans are what have made people bitter. I dislike the plans too. Maybe I came to adobe late, but I love their software.

Out of all the shady organizations that charge my card when I don't expect it, I mind adobe the least.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#914

Post by [deleted] »

anigbrowl wrote: post #643
patcon wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

has never been anything but subscription Because that's not the same as a bait-and-switch, and because they provided value to subscribers in the form of continuous innovation.

[deleted]

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#917

Post by zinckiwi »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #292
GordonS wrote: post #154

Earlier 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'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a similar fate I strongly suspect not. It's in a lot more use than Fireworks (which was cool -I used it- but was always a bit "niche"). If they play their cards right, they can use it to leverage their way back into many designers' good graces (who had been leaving the Adobesphere for the Figmasphere). They would probably add ways to leverage their cloud storage and other a…

$20B in just shy of 10 years. I can't see how anyone could pass that up.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#918

Post by panta »

mortenjorck wrote: post #494
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…

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…

It seems that Capture One is on the same trajectory sadly.

Re: Adobe to acquire Figma for $20B

#919

Post by solardev »

thehappypm wrote: post #618
connor11528 wrote: post #537

According 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...

Miro and Canva are really similar to Figma, no ?

Not really, no. Miro is a giant whiteboard/brainstorming tool. Canva is a presentation tool, like Powerpoint. To say they can be used for design is saying that MS Paint or Photoshop can be used to design mockups... sure, but that's not really what they're made for, and it would be a painful experience (even Adobe learned that, eventually, and tried to copy Figma by making the separate Adobe XD tool)

You can try to coerce those other apps to make wireframes & mockups, but Figma is much better for both designers (the layout tools are phenomenal and CSS-like) and devs (the exports are good, there's CSS code to copy, a bunch of plugins, etc.).

I've had various product people try to make mockups in Miro because they didn't want to learn Figma, and it usually ends up being a bunch of screenshots clobbered together. That's a lot harder to work with than being able to click on a particular component in Figma and see its exact color, border radiuses, flexbox layouts, etc., and then to have entire widgets, dashboards, screens, and apps composed out of these components and built into a functional interactive prototype that stakeholders can review and comment on and devs can inspect for technical details. Figma is really really good at that.

If someone tried to send me one in Canva, well, I think I'd just quit right then and there lol. (Don't get me wrong, Canva is a great tool for presentations, but not for sharing designs)

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