Hacker News Reader

Comment by evrydayhustling | Hacker News Reader

Adding a legal battle with the FTC to the cost of any acquisition can chill and kill otherwise obvious deals, and or sap value out of those that push through.

FWIW, I think there are good reasons to limit tech consolidation, including this one. But anyone should realize that it will reshape the industry in unpredictable ways, including some that harm "real" consumers and builders.

View on HN

But anti-trust isn't being invented now. It's always existed. Companies already factor in anti-trust risk when doing M&A—it's just hard to quantify the expected value of that risk

If anything, IMHO, we've been too lenient with anti-trust in Tech in particular over the past 5-10 years. This just dials things back a little, and makes it so that "hard to quantify" risk is a little more likely than it was before, and certainly a little more likely than zero

I don't think Adobe / Figma specifically is an "otherwise obvious deal" precisely because it has such obvious anti-trust risk. The fact that this merger was even announced is all the proof I need that we were being too lenient. Figma can still sell to any number of huge Tech companies

Published guidance is the correct tool. Blocking acquisitions doesn’t really decrease uncertainty.

The guidance already exists. Don't buy your biggest competitor, unless you're but one player in a diversified sector.

Blocking acquisitions creates precedents.

Adobe will be fine; this might wreck its biggest competitor.

What’s net new about this? It has been the case for decades that if you try to sell to the only major competitor that it could be blocked under antitrust.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com