Uncle Sam to block Adobe absorption of Figma over monopoly fears (opens in new tab)

Adobe isn't (ostensibly) trying to monopolize though, they're trying to buy another company.

Regulators step in and say "That would be a monopoly", to which everyone involved says "Darn, well we can't continue trying to merge then, since that would be a felony".

This all seems totally fine and legal and working as designed.

Are you suggesting that Adobe and Figma executives should be criminally charged with an attempt to monopolize the market?

Edit: I looked up the justice department’s stance. From: https://www.justice.gov/atr/antitrust-laws-and-you

The Sherman Antitrust Act

This Act outlaws all contracts, combinations, and conspiracies that unreasonably restrain interstate and foreign trade. This includes agreements among competitors to fix prices, rig bids, and allocate customers, which are punishable as criminal felonies.

The Sherman Act also makes it a crime to monopolize any part of interstate commerce. An unlawful monopoly exists when one firm controls the market for a product or service, and it has obtained that market power, not because its product or service is superior to others, but by suppressing competition with anticompetitive conduct.

The Act, however, is not violated simply when one firm's vigorous competition and lower prices take sales from its less efficient competitors; in that case, competition is working properly.

Out of context? Sure. But Adobe isn't going to just buy it, operate it, and collect its revenue.

Adobe rightfully sees itself standing on the edge of a cliff. Adobe XD, despite having some great features, was handily clobbered in the market first by Sketch, and then by the vastly lighter-weight Figma. Beyond that, Figma has a great, intuitive, smooth interface for making vector graphics. It's not nearly as powerful as Illustrator, but easily does what most interface and web designers need, and that's probably a huge chunk of Illustrator's market rather than the more intensive digital artist users.

If they lose Illustrator, the ecosystem is a lot less valuable. Photoshop has significant competition from relative newcomers and print media, etc. made in InDesign is has much less gravity than it used to.

So rather than trying to make better and more innovative products in earnest, they're going to try to buy and suppress their competition just like Autodesk and so many other dinosaur graphics companies.

What's growth rate on that revenue though? If it's like 20-30% growth per year... you're talking a pretty short amount of time (3-5 years) until that revenue multiplier is at parity with many publicly traded tech companies.

It only serves their interest if it creates a monopoly.

Creating a monopoly is in every business's interest.

Less competition = a worse product. Figma is great and that’s entirely due to disrupting business from adobe. Allowing adobe to buy them means Adobe doesn’t have to innovate and can remain hyper dominate.

One harm to citizens is that future entrepreneurs will be less motivated to create new products in a regulatory environment that makes it difficult or impossible for them to profit from selling their businesses. Therefore there will be fewer disruptive / innovative products.

If you think this is theoretical, see the startup scene in Europe and Canada.

For all those downvoting this question, I think you should take it at face value. It would be nice to think that "Genuine question..." is not a prerequisite for that.

Adobe could, with a monopoly position, jack up the price of Figma (or kill it off entirely) so as to not hurt the market position of their cash cow.