Adobe's stock is down 17% on the news. So, it's bad for consumers. Bad for Adobe. Probably only good for the ego of a few executives and investment bankers.
They may have considered that by bundling Figma's functionality into their cloud subscription, with the number of new subscribers that would bring, that revenue attributable to that added functionality would be much more than 400 million annually.
It would need to be much, much more than 400 million to justify the purchase, and I'm not sure numbers of that size will ever materialize.
Another way to look at it is, what amount of investment would Adobe need to make to bring equivalent functionality in-house. Certainly less than 20 billion, by an order of magnitude at least. But then you have to wait, and manage with inspiration and dedication, and possibly fail. Not for the faint of heart.
My guess is there are a lot of Figma employees who would rather not be working for Adobe, regardless of whatever incentives they get in the deal. It's hard to overstate how little regard software designers have for Adobe.
It gives me whiplash to see Sean Parent's deeply technical public talks on Adobe's experiences with C++, and Adobe's disdain for customers (and presumably other programmers' disdain for Adobe).
Well they wont all be massive now that mostly VCs and sometimes founders soak up all the benefits from an acquisition before the regular employees get much.
Well, good for the founders and investors anyways, who knows how many employees had meaningful holdings that outweigh the hurt of being integrated into Adobe
