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I would argue that the regulators made their point pretty clear early on when the DOJ opened a lawsuit against Adobe. The people most responsible for keeping t

I would argue that the regulators made their point pretty clear early on when the DOJ opened a lawsuit against Adobe. The people most responsible for keeping this in limbo were Adobe’s lawyers.

ajmurmann 3y ago
The Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business. I'm general against mergers and think it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead, but if we do something, let's do it smoothly and right. That said, for mergers like that a ton of countries are involved which makes things even more complicated and makes it harder to point out where we need to make things smoother.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  This would have gone quickly, to no, if Figma and Adobe had taken the first answer they got from DoJ at face value.
  - xvector 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Matticus_Rex 3y ago
      You're getting downvotes, but IMO it's because people don't realize how far outside the norm Lina Khan's stances and approach has been.
      - ethbr1 3y ago
        "The norm" is doing a lot of lifting there. Trailing historical average doesn't opine on correctness/utility.
      - Ensorceled 3y ago
        It certainly seems "outside the norm" if you compare to the hands off approach that has been taken the past few decades. It's irrelevant anyway, Lina Khan's views were well known at the time of her selection, this is the desired outcome by Biden.
      - NeuNeurosis 3y ago
        Your completely correct if you mean the norm since the 80's when antitrust enforcement was abandoned. Her stances completely align with the standing anti-laws and regulations that have existed for over 80 years. The anti-trust bar and big business have been trying to redefine what anti-trust is for the past 30-40 years which is what got us into this mess of giant firms and too big to fail economics. The perspective that bringing back regulatory action is outside the norm shows just how skewed economic thinking has been in the US.
        xvector 3y ago
        It's not just "regulatory action" that the FTC under Khan is embarking on - it's outright hostility and refusal to even work with companies she personally doesn't like. There is a difference between enforcing laws and then just trying to burn down everything you touch. Khan is embarking on the latter quest (see the way she tried to handle the Within Unlimited acquisition.) It would be different if the FTC actually attempted to engage in good faith. As someone that has seen them in action recently, they do not.
  - russell_h 3y ago
    I don't know anything about the Adobe / Figma situation, but "If you just don't question the government they won't make your life so hard" doesn't seem like a very strong response to accusations of overreach.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      By all means question the government! And take them to court! Just don't disagree with them and engage lawyers AND then complain about how long "the process" is taking.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]). It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [2] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acquire-Figma/default.aspx https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...
  - depr 3y ago
    >They involve the wealth of nations Do they though? People often compare rich people or companies to a country GDP's, but GDP is based on a single year. The size of a company's bank account is not. A year is pretty arbitrary. In some sense it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph It’s saying the distance is within a class negotiable by a Ferrari. In the GDP to value case, we’re saying that the consideration at hand is comparable to all of the work of a small country for a year. So the care the latter gets is in the same class as the care the former should receive.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.) Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?
    - 3y ago
- consumer451 3y ago
  Or, maybe we could make attempts to regulate our market economy in order to prevent monopolies, and thereby encouraging competition. (aka, disruption) I didn't truly process the damage that monopolies can do until I heard this podcast with Sean Carroll and Cory Doctorow. There is a full transcript at this link if you prefer to read the conversation. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-cory-doctorow-on-technology-monopoly-and-the-future-of-the-internet/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-c...
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    As I said, I'm quite happy with that, but if we do something, let's do it right and not half-assed.
    - consumer451 3y ago
      I agree there. We seem to be recovering from a cycle of not caring about monopolies at all, and corporations are now as strong as they were in the late 19th century. I am not surprised that anti-trust is slow and unpredictable today. I hope that we settle into a more predictable regime, no matter which political party is in power. For historical references, anti-trust filings began against Standard Oil in 1906, and it was broken up in 1911. [0] The AT&T breakup took four years, from 1978 to 1982. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T
    - jzb 3y ago
      When the powers that be decide to block a merger, they have to make the case. There's looking at the proposed merger and being able to say "this is bad and may be antitrust," and then there's actually making the case when it comes down to it. That takes time. And you can expect companies like Adobe to fight rather than just saying "oh, you don't like this? OK. We'll withdraw." The DOJ and other bodies voiced opposition early on. They signaled quickly that they were not in favor of this. The interim between those actions and today were the regulatory bodies actively making cases against it and/or negotiating with Adobe & Figma how they could proceed in a way that the regulatory bodies would want to approve of the deal. The whole idea that this was "half-assed" in some way is misguided. Note that I worked for Red Hat while IBM was acquiring it. It took from (IIRC) October 2018 to July 2019 without strong opposition. When you're talking about companies that have that much impact on a market, it takes a while. And it should -- the larger market doesn't benefit from waking up to find out that a major software supplier has been gobbled up overnight. You can see the pain that VMware employees + customers are going through right now and they've had a lot of time to process the idea.
- 0xbadcafebee 3y ago
  > it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead I never understand why this is the only other option. If you're in a town and open a coffee shop, and someone else opens a coffee shop, if the town is big enough, you can both thrive. You don't have to try to take out the competition. But every big corporation decides it's the only option.
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    Because if you are the only one selling coffee, you can jack up the prices and keep the returns growing as they are required to.
- jn1234 3y ago
  That deal had more to do with national security concerns being addressed and Broadcom's shitty business strategy rather than market share concerns.
- vpribish 3y ago
  VMW-AVGO was held up by the Chinese and South Korean regulators - it gets geopolitical. sure would be nice if everything was clear and clean for businesses but also it would be nice if I had a pony and magic shoes.
technofiend 3y ago
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair
matthewowen 3y ago
This is just straight up factually incorrect: the DOJ never filed a lawsuit to block this deal.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  Your comments are straight up factually misrepresenting what happened. There were plenty of news reports early this year that DoJ was preparing to file suit against the merger. I guarantee they were in close contact with Adobe's lawyers, and the normal process here is that Adobe's lawyers/execs come back and say "hold up, let's see if we can make a deal" - that's essentially what happens in the vast majority of lawsuits. Adobe (and Figma) knew full well this deal wasn't a slam dunk from the beginning.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Threatening a lawsuit is better than nothing but it definitely didn't lead to a quick resolution. At a certain point the answer to whether they can make a deal needs to be "no", not "we'll wait".
  - jamiek88 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - matthewowen 3y ago
      You’ve posted this about me twice. I haven’t shown any ire and I think it’s counter to the spirit of hacker news to suggest bad faith in my posts based on my proximity to the topic.
      - jamiek88 3y ago
        [flagged]
        robocat 3y ago
        > Well he works there and misses out That's a fine point to make > hence his ire Putting your spin on the actions of others is beyond rude > Your weasel words are weasley. That's 100% against the HN guidelines and community I suggest if you wish to disagree then try doing it without being disagreeable

I would argue that the regulators made their point pretty clear early on when the DOJ opened a lawsuit against Adobe. The people most responsible for keeping this in limbo were Adobe’s lawyers.

ajmurmann 3y ago

The Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business. I'm general against mergers and think it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead, but if we do something, let's do it smoothly and right. That said, for mergers like that a ton of countries are involved which makes things even more complicated and makes it harder to point out where we need to make things smoother.

ethbr1 3y ago
This would have gone quickly, to no, if Figma and Adobe had taken the first answer they got from DoJ at face value.
- xvector 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - Matticus_Rex 3y ago
    You're getting downvotes, but IMO it's because people don't realize how far outside the norm Lina Khan's stances and approach has been.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      "The norm" is doing a lot of lifting there. Trailing historical average doesn't opine on correctness/utility.
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      It certainly seems "outside the norm" if you compare to the hands off approach that has been taken the past few decades. It's irrelevant anyway, Lina Khan's views were well known at the time of her selection, this is the desired outcome by Biden.
    - NeuNeurosis 3y ago
      Your completely correct if you mean the norm since the 80's when antitrust enforcement was abandoned. Her stances completely align with the standing anti-laws and regulations that have existed for over 80 years. The anti-trust bar and big business have been trying to redefine what anti-trust is for the past 30-40 years which is what got us into this mess of giant firms and too big to fail economics. The perspective that bringing back regulatory action is outside the norm shows just how skewed economic thinking has been in the US.
      - xvector 3y ago
        It's not just "regulatory action" that the FTC under Khan is embarking on - it's outright hostility and refusal to even work with companies she personally doesn't like. There is a difference between enforcing laws and then just trying to burn down everything you touch. Khan is embarking on the latter quest (see the way she tried to handle the Within Unlimited acquisition.) It would be different if the FTC actually attempted to engage in good faith. As someone that has seen them in action recently, they do not.
- russell_h 3y ago
  I don't know anything about the Adobe / Figma situation, but "If you just don't question the government they won't make your life so hard" doesn't seem like a very strong response to accusations of overreach.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    By all means question the government! And take them to court! Just don't disagree with them and engage lawyers AND then complain about how long "the process" is taking.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Broadcom & VMware merger took similarly long and was approved. The duration is completely unacceptable and poison to business The number of such mergers, globally every year, is countable on two hands. They involve the wealth of nations (this one’s similar to Malta’s GDP [1][2]). It would be unreasonable to permanently staff the regulatory force that would be required to quickly review such deals in any industry. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi... [2] https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acquire-Figma/default.aspx https://news.adobe.com/news/news-details/2022/Adobe-to-Acqui...
- depr 3y ago
  >They involve the wealth of nations Do they though? People often compare rich people or companies to a country GDP's, but GDP is based on a single year. The size of a company's bank account is not. A year is pretty arbitrary. In some sense it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > it's like saying the distance between New York and Washington is 200 miles which is not that long, because a Ferrari's top speed is 200 mph It’s saying the distance is within a class negotiable by a Ferrari. In the GDP to value case, we’re saying that the consideration at hand is comparable to all of the work of a small country for a year. So the care the latter gets is in the same class as the care the former should receive.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  I don't understand. If there are several per year, and they're going to take a couple months even at maximum speed, then permanently staffing the regulatory force sounds very reasonable to me! (For the US and EU which are going to weigh in on a big fraction.) Why would you want to be hiring and firing constantly?
  - 3y ago
consumer451 3y ago
Or, maybe we could make attempts to regulate our market economy in order to prevent monopolies, and thereby encouraging competition. (aka, disruption) I didn't truly process the damage that monopolies can do until I heard this podcast with Sean Carroll and Cory Doctorow. There is a full transcript at this link if you prefer to read the conversation. https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-cory-doctorow-on-technology-monopoly-and-the-future-of-the-internet/ https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2019/10/21/69-c...
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  As I said, I'm quite happy with that, but if we do something, let's do it right and not half-assed.
  - consumer451 3y ago
    I agree there. We seem to be recovering from a cycle of not caring about monopolies at all, and corporations are now as strong as they were in the late 19th century. I am not surprised that anti-trust is slow and unpredictable today. I hope that we settle into a more predictable regime, no matter which political party is in power. For historical references, anti-trust filings began against Standard Oil in 1906, and it was broken up in 1911. [0] The AT&T breakup took four years, from 1978 to 1982. [1] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._AT%26T
  - jzb 3y ago
    When the powers that be decide to block a merger, they have to make the case. There's looking at the proposed merger and being able to say "this is bad and may be antitrust," and then there's actually making the case when it comes down to it. That takes time. And you can expect companies like Adobe to fight rather than just saying "oh, you don't like this? OK. We'll withdraw." The DOJ and other bodies voiced opposition early on. They signaled quickly that they were not in favor of this. The interim between those actions and today were the regulatory bodies actively making cases against it and/or negotiating with Adobe & Figma how they could proceed in a way that the regulatory bodies would want to approve of the deal. The whole idea that this was "half-assed" in some way is misguided. Note that I worked for Red Hat while IBM was acquiring it. It took from (IIRC) October 2018 to July 2019 without strong opposition. When you're talking about companies that have that much impact on a market, it takes a while. And it should -- the larger market doesn't benefit from waking up to find out that a major software supplier has been gobbled up overnight. You can see the pain that VMware employees + customers are going through right now and they've had a lot of time to process the idea.
0xbadcafebee 3y ago
> it's better for consumers and the market if competitors fight to the (metaphorical) death instead I never understand why this is the only other option. If you're in a town and open a coffee shop, and someone else opens a coffee shop, if the town is big enough, you can both thrive. You don't have to try to take out the competition. But every big corporation decides it's the only option.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Because if you are the only one selling coffee, you can jack up the prices and keep the returns growing as they are required to.
jn1234 3y ago
That deal had more to do with national security concerns being addressed and Broadcom's shitty business strategy rather than market share concerns.
vpribish 3y ago
VMW-AVGO was held up by the Chinese and South Korean regulators - it gets geopolitical. sure would be nice if everything was clear and clean for businesses but also it would be nice if I had a pony and magic shoes.

technofiend 3y ago

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” - Upton Sinclair

matthewowen 3y ago

This is just straight up factually incorrect: the DOJ never filed a lawsuit to block this deal.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
Your comments are straight up factually misrepresenting what happened. There were plenty of news reports early this year that DoJ was preparing to file suit against the merger. I guarantee they were in close contact with Adobe's lawyers, and the normal process here is that Adobe's lawyers/execs come back and say "hold up, let's see if we can make a deal" - that's essentially what happens in the vast majority of lawsuits. Adobe (and Figma) knew full well this deal wasn't a slam dunk from the beginning.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Threatening a lawsuit is better than nothing but it definitely didn't lead to a quick resolution. At a certain point the answer to whether they can make a deal needs to be "no", not "we'll wait".
- jamiek88 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - matthewowen 3y ago
    You’ve posted this about me twice. I haven’t shown any ire and I think it’s counter to the spirit of hacker news to suggest bad faith in my posts based on my proximity to the topic.
    - jamiek88 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - robocat 3y ago
        > Well he works there and misses out That's a fine point to make > hence his ire Putting your spin on the actions of others is beyond rude > Your weasel words are weasley. That's 100% against the HN guidelines and community I suggest if you wish to disagree then try doing it without being disagreeable