There is no way a company Adobe's size should ever be allowed to grow by acquisition. At a certain point that route needs to be cut off forever.
In my view, the case for blocking this acquisition couldn't be any clearer. If Adobe wants to grow in this space, it should make better software or cut prices or both.
Canva is 5 times bigger if not more than Adobe Express which is the equivalent.
Substance is miniscule in the 3d market compared to Max, Softimage, Maya etc.
Adobe is big because of the many vertical they are in, not because they own them.
I don't buy it. It's not just about indvidual verticals in their current state. For these conglomerates it's always about buying rising competitors out of the market before they can become a strategic threat.
Figma could have expanded beyond any particular vertical they are currently in. Figma could have been bought buy a stronger competitor from outside the graphics space (such as Microsoft). Adobe didn't want to let that happen.
We should block all of these defensive acquisitions. And we should block all acquisitions that help an already big conglomerate capture the next neighboring vertical without doing any actual engineering work (except for small acqui-hires perhaps)
Adobe doesn't have network effect or anything like that.
Just to give you the numbers:
Adobe Creative Cloud, which includes Photoshop, has over 22 million subscribers.
Thats 1/5 of Canva users.
You guys are simply factually wrong.
It's the argument and the conclusion that I don't buy, not your (and Adobe's) carefully selected set of facts.
Here's a very big player in the graphics software market that tried to buy a potential strategic threat out of the market. This is the fact that matters in my view.
I wouldn't let the top 5 in any market buy another company that is or could soon become a significant competitor in that or a closely related market.
Figma have 3 million users. In what world would a purchase of them be dominating Canva with 135 million monthly users and with 16 million paying subscribers.
You are confusing Adobe being a big company with why they are a big company.
Apparently anti-trust regulators disagree. They put up enough of a fight to at least give Adobe an excuse for letting the deal fall through.
>You are confusing Adobe being a big company with why they are a big company.
I have heard your argument and I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately, you're not responding to my counter arguments, which makes this not a very interesting debate.
You don't have a counter argument, you just have your own opinion on how it should be done. Antitrust is not being done that way you seem to think it's not the reason why the UK didn't allow it.
Adobe don't dominate 3D, illustration, ads, video and I could go on.