[obblekk]

In case you ever find yourself with as much leverage as Figma seemingly had… always negotiate a break up fee to compensate for exactly this.

T-Mobile famously got a $4B breakup fee after DOJ blocked ATT from acquiring them. That $4B was used to buy more spectrum and overhaul the brand, leading to huge growth to the point that T-Mobile is now a big 3 player (it used to be big 2 only).

If Figma wrangles $2-3B cash out of this, they could probably take down the entire adobe ecosystem.

[j_crick]

> If Figma wrangles $2-3B cash out of this, they could probably take down the entire adobe ecosystem

Do you think that just $2-3B would be enough to push for developing alternatives to at least Photoshop and Illustrator and Lightroom and After Effects and successfully going after their markets? During what timeframe? Doesn’t feel like it tbh.

[cmdialog]

A lot of designers are already abandoning Adobe because they are tired of their garbage. Many of my peers have turned to Serif Affinity apps as Photoshop/Illustrator/InDesign replacements and they do an incredible job. Nobody cares about Adobe on iPads, most artists are reaching for Procreate. Most of the issues involve sharing of files since Adobe has such a large share and their file types are proprietary.

There are alternatives out there and Figma has a huge grip on web design among other things. Adobe has nothing good for web design. Nobody wants to use XD.

So you can see that there is already strong push away from Adobe. I don't know if Figma is going to eat Adobe's lunch in the next couple years, but they will be poised to be competitive.

[spaceguillotine]

I tried using the Adobe iPad apps, they are so far behind the desktop versions its unreal. I got so frustrated with Illustrator i stopped using it and have been trying Inkscape on my desktop instead. I don't want monthly fees for design software. Procreate is amazing but lacks the vector needs I have. I've given up using my iPad Pro as anything more than a sketchpad at this point, not the Macbook replacement i wanted it to be with the lack of control over the OS and being stuck in the App Store eco system.

Affinity is looking pretty attractive now too after hearing about it today.

I cut my teeth on Macromedia Fireworks and Dreamweaver but all Adobe did was run them into the ground.

[Espressosaurus]

Agreed. I'm not a professional, but I'm willing to spend money like a pro and I have gone out of my way to avoid Adobe products due to their business practices. So far the main place that is hurting me is Lightroom. None of the equivalents I've tried are as good (still need to try Capture One one of these days, except they are also starting to be...not great with their business).

Affinity Photo is a pretty good Photoshop replacement, but I'm still waiting for them to release a Lightroom replacement.

Lord knows someone needs to start eating Adobe's lunch. They've had a stranglehold for too long.

[zztop44]

I mean Figma has been devouring their lunch to the point where Adobe was prepared to pay them $20bn to stop

[syeare]

Capture One Pro is AMAZING for photography and managing large catalogs of RAW images. It's great for nondestructive editing and is a killer combo with Luminar/Luminar Neo. Also, I'm not sure why, but stock (no 3rd party plug-ins) Capture One Pro seems to somehow make colors pop a bit more than stock Lightroom

[knicholes]

It's funny you say that, because if you look at Adobe's financials, you'll find that yoy revenue has continued to only increase and is continually hitting new records.

[tankerkiller125]

That's because they switched to a subscription model and are practically forcing companies to switch from their legacy perpetual licensing model. I can assure you that it's pissing a lot of people off and a lot of people are trying to find alternatives.

Where I work we dropped Adobe Pro because of the subscription model and switched over to FoxIT

[cmdialog]

Not only do they have a subscription model, but if you get their biggest single user package, which is ~$54/mo, they charge you ~$300 early cancellation fee. This is insane to me and is the main reason why I personally dumped them for my professional use.

[macintux]

BlackBerry’s best years were after the iPhone launched.

I’m not saying Adobe’s looking at a similar collapse, but trends can be misleading.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

> Procreate

Procreate is f**king amazing.

The combination of the 12-inch (or, in my case, Mini) iPad (with PaperLike screen protector), Pencil 2, and Procreate is awesome.

[cmdialog]

High five, I also got iPad + PaperLike screen protector combo and it really is super nice

[dikaio]

Agree. Installing one adobe app requires the installation of their app manager which sits in the background. Also the one app installed, installs and creates about 10 different directories, excess junk, pretty much what adobe has become. Now they try to buy out brilliant apps like figma which will only kill the life of it IMO.

[_8j50]

> Adobe has nothing good for web design

They acquired Macromedia dreamweaver back in the day and killed it. RIP to a fallen hero.

[cmdialog]

I remember when Dreamweaver was Allaire Homesite, and was then purchased by Macromedia for their suite. Macromedia didn't do such a great job with it either in my opinion.

[pjmlp]

Over here on my bubble, Adobe reigns supreme as always.

[godzillabrennus]

Yeah, I do some design work for our organization and my time is more valuable than the tool. Figma makes creating a feedback loop easier with a group so it’s worth learning but most of the time adobe products still reign supreme.

[ido]

+1 anecdata, I've tried to get colleagues off of adobe suite for years to little success.

[cmdialog]

Adobe Suite is always going to be around, no doubt, but you also have viable alternatives for the day to day work, and then you use Adobe stuff when you have to, for a client that requires it for instance.

Prior to moving to Figma 100% of the time, my current agency, and prior agency, were using Sketch. Adobe products were secondary. Others in my field have reported largely the same. Most of the time people simply don't want to change what's familiar and works, regardless of how much they are paying or who they are paying.

[pjmlp]

Adobe is much more than only creative suite, it is usually on pair with SAP in enterprise deployments for content management and tooling for CMS.

[poof131]

Disagree. Figma should be competing with Adobe on the open market and winning. Seeing them displace CC in the enterprise in ways Sketch never did. $2-3B would be an insane propellent to them. This deal is great for Adobe, Figma, Greylock, and others, but not consumers or the majority of Figma users in my opinion. Glad to see the antitrust resurgence in this country. The rollup play is going away. Adobe's leaders are going to have to get more creative to compete :)

[Spooky23]

Adobe is rapacious since they went subscription. They have amazing technology, but every contract renewal is a high stakes game.

My business would dump 50% of our Adobe footprint just for leverage.

[nasseri]

and substance suite. I think people on hacker news mostly interact with adobe via photoshop and illustrator and don't realize how many hooks they have under their belt.

[conductr]

Not all at once but it’s a nice catalyst to start building revenue streams and stealing share product by product

[devwastaken]

Yes, if we didn't have software patents. All of these products can be replaced by a team in a year or less. Overwhelmingly the features are basic image manipulation. One guy made photopea, an effective Photoshop replacement in javascript.

Adobe has intellectual property, not innovation.

[ttoinou]

So following your first idea, the guy behind Photopea should be sued in justice by Adobe for IP infringement, no ?

[conductr]

He probably could be. It probably would not take much to bankrupt the guy. It just hasn’t reached the materiality mark for adobe to care.

[lotsofpulp]

T-Mobile US ($177B) even has a bigger market cap than Verizon ($162B) and ATT ($138B). ATT’s management has been garbage for the last 15 years.

[smcin]

Post-merger/acquisition of Sprint, yes (initiated in 2018 and finally allowed by regulators in 2020).

Interesting detail about the prior 2014 Softbank/Sprint bid to acquire T-Mobile:

> "It was reported that... Sprint had insisted on a low termination fee to prevent regulators from being given an incentive to block the deal, as had occurred with AT&T's failed attempt to purchase T-Mobile."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation_a...

[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't understand that. Why would a large termination fee be an incentive for regulators to block the deal?

[vlovich123]

Total guess on my part but the smaller party is “made whole” which is less politically problematic than if a large company put in a bid, regulators block it, and the insufficient fee harming the company is blamed on the regulatory activity instead of the insufficiency of the fee.

Unless you’re asking why a small fee would hurt a small company. In that case my understanding is that acquisition talks really stall the business and defocus the company for a non trivial amount of time, not to mention that you’ve given a rival deep insights into your business that they can then use to go after you.

[smcin]

It gives the regulators more leverage to demand concessions. Then the regulator ends up playing brinkmanship with the acquiring company.

The US now only has three nationwide cellphone networks so there are lots of concessions that can reasonably be demanded. (They should have never allowed the number of carriers to be consolidated down to three, but that's another story).

[vxNsr]

Because it causes a large amount of money to go to underdog with basically no strings attached. It’s essentially free money to the smaller party which they could use to increase competition.

[maroonblazer]

Substituting one Goliath for another is not the future we should be interested in. I'd like to see a competitive landscape where we, the users of these tools, enjoy the benefits of healthy competition.

[roflyear]

It would be wonderful if someone took down adobe.

[ido]

> If Figma wrangles $2-3B cash out of this, they could probably take down the entire adobe ecosystem.

I think you highly underestimates how much lock-in adobe has (and intentionally pushed, e.g. by doing what they can to prevent other programs from parsing their file formats, similar to what Microsoft used to do but fortunately no longer does).