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Adobe

  • Adobe abandons $20B acquisition of Figma

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    1 min read

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    Jess Weatherbed reporting at The Verge writes:

    Following mounting pressure from regulators in the UK and EU, Adobe and Figma announced on Monday that both companies are mutually terminating their merger agreement, which would have seen Adobe acquire the Figma product design platform for $20 billion.

    As a result of the termination, Adobe will be required to pay Figma a reverse termination fee of $1 billion in cash.

    It’s a Christmas miracle! The competition in the field of creative/graphic design software is horrendous, so this is definitely good news if you’re a creative. The last time I wrote about this merger, I had a feeling the deal was going to be torn apart. Theoretically, this news means lower prices and more innovation down the road as Adobe and Figma compete for customers. This is also yet another sign that the United States has largely abdicated its regulatory authority to the European Commission.

  • Adobe set to acquire Figma for $20B

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    2 min read

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    Big news yesterday in the tech world. Adobe likely minted a few millionaires with this deal. Figma was snatched up by Adobe for $20B

    For years, Figma stood headstrong in its’ resolution that collaboration in design tools begins and ends on the web — and they’re right. Productivity tools such as video creation, document collaboration, email, and even cloud storage (Dropbox) have had tremendous growth.

    Adobe’s humble beginning began way back in the 1980’s at Xerox PARC long before Tim Berners-Lee’s proposal on the web in 1989 was published. Ever since Sketch entered the market, the design tool market is becoming increasingly crowded. Adobe was once was a Goliath organization. A looming tower so large that no one dare take them on. Well, Figma gave them a really good run for their money.

    Chances are, Adobe was forced to make such a ludicrous offer, the board (and the founders) couldn’t refuse. For years, Figma has been eating Adobe’s lunch. They’ve been on buying spree building a moat around their Creative Cloud garden. Make no mistake, this deal will be bad for knowledge & design workers in the long-term, as design tool choices begin to dry up, and users are forced into Adobe’s suite of creative tools. If past is precedent, Figma will be slowly rolled into their brand and ecosystem and we’ll all be worse off for it. They’ll slowly raise the pricing, and lock us into expensive yearly plans to get access to Figma’s effortless product.

    How is the design world feeling about this? Well, this kind of hits the nail on the head:

    This won’t be the last we hear about Adobe + Figma. For now, pricing will remain unchanged, and educational account will continue to be free.

    This won’t be the last acquisition we’ll see from Adobe, but it might be last one that tops $20B.

  • General Magic – Trailer

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    2 min read

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    General Magic was probably the single-most important project of the 20th century. Originally spun out of an internal Apple project. The at-the-time CEO, John Sculley later joined the board of General Magic and despite Apple’s minority stake in General Magic, attempted to cannibalize their research and neuter their products:

    Even though the company folded shortly after the dot-com bust in 2004, the spoils of their research and development gave us Palm’s Pilot, RIM’s BlackBerry, Apple’s iPhone, and countless other products that we now collectively call: the smartphones. Veterans of General Magic are, to say the least, numerous:

    But wait, there’s more: