Illustration by Kristen Radtke / The Verge
Adobe has been issued with a formal antitrust complaint by EU regulators regarding its $20 billion bid for cloud-based product design platform Figma. Following an in-depth investigation that was launched on August 7th, the European Commission reached the preliminary conclusion on Friday that if the deal goes ahead, it may “significantly reduce competition in the global markets” for the supply of interactive product design tools, vector editing tools, and raster editing tools.
The Commission has issued a statement of objections outlining its competition concerns. This highlights that EU officials believe Figma already exerts a “significant constraining influence” over Adobe’s Illustrator and Photoshop editing tools, and is “significantly…