1 year ago

When https://www.techmeme.com/220915/p18#a220915p18 of Adobe acquiring the web-based collaborative design tool Figma for about $20 billion — one of the most significant internet M&A deals over the past twenty years — you could almost hear the anguished cries of web designers the world over. Also in the wake of Figma’s sale, an open source equivalent called https://penpot.app/ began trending on Twitter and rose to the https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32851262.

Regardless of what you think about Adobe, which has a long history of buying up promising web design companies, the Figma acquisition begs the question: does this have any impact on the role of web standards in web design tooling?

To give Figma its due credit, the company built an incredible experience for designers on top of those web standards.

For this reason, we should thank Figma for helping to popularize the web platform over the past 6+ years.