Bingo! Adobe has a de facto monopoly on vector and bitmap editing software tools, and it would make total sense for this acquisition to be stopped by the government on that basis. "The government" in this case would be the DoJ's antitrust division headed by Jonathan Kanter [1]. Looks like the process is to send a letter requesting a "Business Review" [2]. It's probably a "fill out this simple 30 page form, wait 2.5 years (max!) and then have your review request politely declined" situation, but I suppose it's foolish to complain before trying.
If you were a founder and wanted to sell your company, would you want the government telling you that you can’t sell it for the best price?
I'm not so sure about that, I know quite a few graphic designers who've either reverted to the pirating ways of their youthful years, many years ago - or have moved over to Affinity's offerings.
The latter's still a bit rough around the edge - I can't work with Designer (I've been using Illustrator for too many decades to), but I've stopped paying for old rope and nixed my once-beloved Photoshop as it's frankly a waste of cash. Affinity Photo's got some quirks and has a wholly different workflow that I struggle with, but it does the trick in the end.
Could not praise Serif enough for what they’ve done. I gladly paid the license on Mac and windows.
In the last couple of years Figma has essentially overtaken Adobe and Sketch in terms of designer mindshare and usage. I don’t know a single designer (I know hundreds), that doesn’t use Figma. Of course, I’m focused 100% on software, so I’m strictly talking about product, UI/UX design. Not print or graphic design.
The way I see it, Adobe had to buy Figma.
I only hope Macromedia's story doesn't repeat itself: Adobe buying the superior offering just to take it off the market.
Architects rolled up their sleeves and are solving the problem by writing open source software: https://osarch.org/
Source? First I’ve heard of Teddy Roosevelt’s trust busting being a grandiose PR campaign.
Adobe's pricing is more than fair. At least compared to what it used to be, where you'd have to shell out a couple of grand every 2-3 years to keep up with major releases. For me, it worked out a bit cheaper now than it did back then, but I also got a massive, high-quality font library thrown in as well as a bunch of other newer programs like Dimension.
They already have a functional monopoly in the industry and the prices aren't too bad.
Also Figma was a rival to Adobe XD, which was already actually cheaper than Figma was/is.
