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Comment by samwillis | Hacker News Reader

I can't see anyway this is going to be blocked. There is ample evidence of competition and innovation outside of Adobe and Figma in the market. Figma has nowhere close to a monopoly in its narrow slice of the market or even has a significantly dominant position.

If anything seeing Figmas success and acquisition will encourage more startups to launch products in theses categories.

That not to say I don't have legitimate concerns of what Adobe could do to Figma and its customers. And the EU is absolutely right to look into it, it's literally their job to check up on these large deals.

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> narrow slice of the market

Do you have some numbers to back that up as every UX designer I know uses Figma. I did a quick google and the first few results point to surveys with market shares of 63%, 35% & 60%, depending upon metrics used. Figma's growth rate has been huge in recent years, it's already a big beast. If Adobe buys it their market dominance will certainly affect whether startups decide to launch alternatives, unless Adobe shittifies Figma and kills it slowly, which given Adobe's recent history is a strong possibility.

With "narrow slice of the market" I think they mean that their usecase is a small market, not that they capture a tiny part of it.

> There is ample evidence of competition and innovation outside of Adobe and Figma in the market

This can be true at the same time as Adobe buying Figma, integrating it into Creative Cloud and jacking up prices being bad for competition and consumers. The threshold for the EU commission is a dominant position in a market that can be abused, not "monopoly". Especially in a market that has significant barriers to entry.

https://competition-policy.ec.europa.eu/antitrust/antitrust-...

> There is ample evidence of competition

There is?

Yeah lol I was surprised when I read that. Came across as a joke.

Does Microsoft Expression Blend count? Though that was discontinued over a decade ago, and was only capable of designing for WPF+Silverlight - it was also the first product I worked on at Microsoft - and I never heard of anyone ever actually using it for its intended purpose.

As much as I loathe Adobe's dominance in the overall market, I see your point: Figma is a specific type of product of which there are plenty others in the market to choose from (Sketch, UX Pin, Axure RP, ...). Justified to investigate but I don't know of any legal precedence that would support a blocking, so they'd have to create a new one. Unlikely to happen IMHO but I could see how after all of this Adobe will end up increasing it's European Budget for non-profits and "initiatives" with a Brussles address.

Exactly, it's not a good thing, but when compared to other acquisitions there is little evidence this should be blocked.

Back in 2005 (still relevant?) Adobe acquired Macromedia, mainly for Flash. But Macromedia were the "alternative" in the market for many Adobe's products, Photoshop & Fireworks, Illustrator & Freehand for example. They brought the company to dominate in an emerging market, and kill off competing products. Does that count for or against the Figma move?

(I still have very hard feeling for Adobe after they killed Fireworks)

It's a perfect demonstration of why such acquisitions shouldn't be allowed in the future.

> If anything seeing Figmas success and acquisition will encourage more startups to launch products in theses categories.

This is a false argument. Those big companies will have too dominant position to care about startups at some point. And also you can use the same thing against all acquisitions.

Ms acquiring Activision? Don't stop it, it will encourage startups to enter game market Nvidia acquiring AMR? Don't stop it, it will encourage startups to enter chip market, etc.

Do you work for either of them? This feels incredibly naive.

Only those working for Figma would really want this to go through since they want a windfall of millions of dollars from this acquisition.

Unfortunately, the DOJ is not happy with this deal. [0]

[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-23/doj-prepa...

No, I don't, and I recently cancelled my Adobe subscription.

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