Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge
Adobe just abandoned its $20 billion deal to buy Figma, and now we know why. In an interview on the Decoder podcast with The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, Adobe general counsel Dana Rao said that the company couldn’t prove to European regulators that the acquisition wouldn’t harm competition in the future — that is, that Adobe or Figma wouldn’t eventually do more to compete with one another.
Last month, both EU and UK regulators threw up major flags about the competition issue. The European Commission (EC) said that the deal could “significantly reduce competition in the global markets,” and a week later, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) effectively blocked the deal, provisionally concluding that it would “likely harm…