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UK competition regulator finds Adobe’s purchase of Figma could reduce innovation
- have_faith 3y agoI think many Figma users are concerned with Adobe's purchase of Figma. I've already removed Adobe products twice from my life (professional and personal) and would prefer to not have to do it again. That said, I can't see the acquisition being a problem for competition in this particular space. It's not hard to imagine someone just making figma-but-different and becoming the next big thing. There are also countless other existing options.
- safety1st 3y agoLike what? In my neck of the woods, everyone uses Figma, XD or Sketch.
- southwesterly 3y agohttps://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/
- karaterobot 3y agoIt would be very hard to build a product from scratch that competed with Figma. Even if you just straight-up stole all their product choices, features and UX and so on, the engineering under the hood seems pretty high level. Anything is possible, but it would not be trivial.
- danielmarkbruce 3y agoFigma started in 2016 and competed against giant companies (like Adobe) who had been around for decades, and did extremely well. The competition in this space is never ending. They just keep coming. The competition regulators seem to consistently misunderstand the industries they are regulating.
- _jab 3y agoSmall startups these days regularly train cutting edge LLMs. I don't think Figma is that far out-of-reach.
- v3ss0n 3y agoTraining LLM and developing webgl app that works like magic on any devices with no visible performance problems on any level of zoom, dynamic, interactive, smart, lightweight is totally different level of engineerinf skill requirements. Training LLM is like a child play compared to it.hack , even NEETs from 4chan are training erotic roleplay LLM for fun.
- mattkevan 3y agoGood. It absolutely would reduce innovation. Adobe have already canned XD, which was a poor alternative to Figma, but Adobe had to at least pretend to compete. Problem is, even though Figma have captured a large proportion of the digital design market, they took on so much funding that their only real options are a purchase or IPO. I don’t believe that subscriptions alone would bring in enough for the kind of returns the VCs are looking for, especially as it’s almost free for individual designers. And so the enshittification begins.
- quitit 3y agoAdobe, Netflix, Google, etc. They all need to realise one thing. You can choose to start something, but it's only the audience that can choose to end it. Whether that's a new app, series, or web tool: the problem is the same, no one is going to invest their time and effort on something that will be canned if it is not an instant success. Each are now trapped in a problem of their own making: people avoid their new offerings for fear of wasting their time, dooming the new entry.
- 8ytecoder 3y agoWe need a term for it - the fear of adopting something because it might be cancelled based on past history leading to the cancellation further confirming that these companies would cancel new products.
- mattkevan 3y agoThe word Google has already been used as a noun, so we could slightly repurpose it and use it again. E.g. “That Netflix show is fantastic but I wouldn’t bother starting it as it got Googled at the end of the first season.” Or: “Google’s new messaging service looks cool but I’m not going to get everyone to use it as I bet they’ll only go and Google it in about 18 months.”
- spandrew 3y agoThis is absolutely right, and why their new dev tools feature add an additional $25 per seat to use. Even though I would rather pay less — if the integration between a Design System and Github is clean enough it might be worth it for my DSM team? It's real value. It's also why they launched Figjam — which has gotten Miro off of my balance sheet. I want Figma to scale up and be the anti-Adobe. Financial balance of Figma aside - this acquisition kinda sucks.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tuukkah 3y agoThe way out: https://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/
- DHPersonal 3y agoSketch exists, too. https://www.sketch.com/ https://www.sketch.com/
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- v3ss0n 3y agoIt's opensource but performance wise is really bad due to SVG instead of webgl.
- rvz 3y agoUnsurprisingly. [0] Did people here really think that the regulators are going to allow this merger to happen? Adobe might as well pay the $1BN break up fee and the Figma will just use that to fund their IPO. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33919862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33919862
- edgyquant 3y agoI did not want this to go through, but totally expected it since I’m in the US and until a few months ago it seemed our regulators no longer cared about monopolies
- pavlov 3y agoFigma has about $500M annual revenue, AFAICT. In the current environment, money-losing software companies aren’t exactly hot. The valuation from an IPO would be extremely disappointing for investors compared to the $20 billion Adobe is paying. A price/sales multiple of 10x would be generous, and that would be a $5B valuation.
- drumhead 3y agoAdobe's actually done investors a favour and made a realistic enterprise valuation of the company for everyone. If it's worth $20bn to them then it's not likely to float for $5bn. They clearly think there's value there or some kind of competitive advantage that makes the company worth that much.
- pavlov 3y agoThe problem is that the company is worth $20 billion only to Adobe. And that explains why antitrust authorities around the world are interested in this deal: that kind of discrepancy suggests a market distortion in progress.
- drumhead 3y agoWhat about Adobe's competitors? It's not going to be worth that much less to them either
- oli5679 3y agoI interned at the CMA in 2014 and had several friends working on merger control. This [1] page has more details on the case, and has an invitation to comment at the bottom. In my experience, detailed comments from relevant industry participants, e.g. customers, competitors, are given serious weight and consideration, and very few are supplied. It's a useful mechanism for those concerned about a tech merger. "Invitation to comment: closes on 18 May 2023 3 May 2023: The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is considering whether it is or may be the case that this transaction if carried into effect, will result in the creation of a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002 and, if so, whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result, in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services. To assist it with this assessment, the CMA invites comments on the transaction from any interested party. These comments should be provided by the deadline set out above. Contact Please send written representations about any competition issues to: xxxx@cma.gov.uk" Other cases can be found here [2]. [1] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/adobe-slash-figma-merger-inquiry https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases/adobe-slash-figma-merger-inquir... [2] https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases?case_type%5B%5D=mergers&market_sector%5B%5D=electronics-industry https://www.gov.uk/cma-cases?case_type%5B%5D=mergers&market_...
- ClumsyPilot 3y agoThank you, I’ve provided some feedback.
- hfkwer 3y agoYou're about a month and a half too late. The request for comments ended on May 18.
- ClumsyPilot 3y agooh dear
- oli5679 3y agoYeah my comment wasn’t that clear but I was encouraging people to comment on future tech mergers.
- GenerWork 3y agoInteresting. Right now Figma is THE standard for UX design. It completely blew Sketch away thanks to Covid. I really haven't heard UX designers talk about going back to Sketch or any other program, in fact I've only heard multiple people talk about how Figma is just getting better with their new update (especially around prototyping). Personally, I'm not a fan of Adobe, but it seems like there's a lot of UX designers who simply don't care if Adobe buys them or not.
- elforce002 3y agoUntil they find Figma will either disappear or get more expensive under adobe.
- southwesterly 3y agoThey’ll just add it to their subscription service. And probably rename it Figma XD Max Pro.
- firecall 3y agoThey’ll just roll it into their Creative Cloud sub. Probably. It will replace XD.
- mushbino 3y agoI love sigma and have been using it for years, but I'm already starting to look for alternatives. They've already made some changes to free versus premium tiers and anyone who trusts Adobe is an absolute fool. I've moved away from all of their products entirely with the exception of Figma.....for now.
- mercurialsolo 3y agoI would love to see an independent alternative to the Adobe menace
- bannedbybros 3y ago[dead]
- olliecornelia 3y agoLol now do Autodesk
- crest 3y agoI'm sure it will produce innovative business practices inflicted on a captive userbase.
- Pete-Codes 3y agoHow does it work if the UK blocks it and the rest of the world doesn't?
- daveoc64 3y agoIf an activity has been blocked in one country, the options are: 1) Cancel the merger/acquisition completely. 2) Work out some sort of mitigation with the country. 3) Spin off/discontinue business in that country.
- pcurve 3y agoIs there a similar precedent for 3)?
- RadiozRadioz 3y agoPossibly a spinoff organization like Figma UK Operations LTD that handles the UK business separately from Adobe.
- bsimpson 3y agoAnd what, buys/sells from merged AdobeFigma?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lhnz 3y agoOn the contrary, the ability for startups to be purchased by larger companies is the majority of the financial incentive towards creating startups. If competition regulators prohibit these transactions, it will harm the startup ecosystem and reduce innovation.
- barnabee 3y agoThis argument makes absolutely no sense to me. The large tech acquirers have extremely high market valuations partly because of the expectation that they continue to get away with doing exactly this. If we had more competent competition regulators and this sort of acquisition was basically not on the cards at all, ever, once a company reaches a certain size then that value would stay in the innovating startups until they IPO or are acquired by a smaller, less predatory/monopolistic company. Either way there’s still an attractive exit. We need to stop inventing reasons to tolerate and justify this behaviour that is clearly bad for society and start pushing for a more diverse tech ecosystem with proper antitrust enforcement.
- spacebanana7 3y ago> This argument makes absolutely no sense to me. There are some business models where acquisition is the only viable way to make money. Deepmind, Shazam, and Giphy were largely valuable because they create value for other big tech companies with respect to customer acquisition, market positioning and intellectual property. These companies had limited ability to make profits on their own. One can still argue though that such acquisitions are still against the public interest even if they’re helpful to a class of startups.
- manderley 3y agoSeems like companies that could have made money through licensing their product instead of being bought out?
- spacebanana7 3y ago
- drumhead 3y agoI wonder if Adobe will respond by saying the UK isnt a good place to invest in as well.
- karaterobot 3y agoThey were losing the battle for the design software market, so they bought the competition. The less innovative company bought the more innovative company. Of course it would reduce innovation.
- rvense 3y agoThey did this before with at least Aldus and Macromedia.
- firecall 3y agoalthough they genuinely killed Quark Xpress by making a better product with Indesign. Whilst Quark totally dropped the ball and failed to innovate and update for modern MacOS. Quark had as good as a 100% of the market before InDesign came along.
- danielmarkbruce 3y agoSome people argue this acquisition opens the door for a new company to make another, newer, better version of Figma because Adobe could screw it up. Ie, they are driving innovation by killing the leader.
- floomk 3y agoIf you want to talk about reducing innovation then have a look at Apple's walled garden. They're preventing so many innovative new apps from ever being created by being inaccessible to young/poor developers.
- whalesalad 3y agoYou can develop iOS applications for free? This comment is so ironic because Apple has been the #1 innovator in so many arenas for decades.
- floomk 3y agoCan I give it to my friend to try on his phone without jumping through a million hoops every week or so? Because I can just send him an apk file via whatsapp without paying anyone a dime. Or let's take a step back: Can I develop the app without buying a $1000 macbook? You can develop for android using any platform. Apple's build tools are limited to only work on macos.
- drewbeck 3y agoWhile true, I think you need to make an argument that those issues are specifically anti-innovation. Really tho I think we collectively use that term whenever it suits us, without much clarity on what innovative outcomes actually are. We need a better definition and better yardsticks.
- floomk 3y agoOf course there are many different things that can aid or hurt innovation. I believe that one of the things that aids innovation is accessibility to a wide spread of developers of all ages, so measures that make this more difficult hurt innovation.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- fortenforge 3y agoIf you make it harder for startups to achieve profitable exits does that incentivize or disincentivize innovation?
- pcurve 3y agoIn my person opinion, in the grand scheme of things, the impact on innovation in this particular case is negligible because only under exceptional circumstance, anti trust regulators intervene to block a merger of a startup. If it becomes more of a common occurrence, I agree it could stifle innovation.
- hiidrew 3y agoI love figma, dislike the merger. Have hopes for this open source alternative https://penpot.app/ https://penpot.app/.
- v3ss0n 3y agoYou are saying without trying.Penpot can only compete in functionalities. Due to their architectural choices of using SVG ,no WebGL renderers, very resource intensive java backend they will never reach performance req of FIGMA. Designing just a few screen is crippling it.