The chief operating officer of Canadian ecommerce company Shopify says Adobe Systems’ US$1.68-billion takeover of Magento will have a “negligible” impact on its business.

“This playbook of big enterprise software companies buying a commerce provider has been done before,” Harley Finkelstein said in an interview with BNN Bloomberg, pointing to examples such as Salesforce’s acquisition of Demandware and Oracle’s purchase of ATG.

“The thing we’ve always seen if companies get acquired, innovation often stops.”

Shares of Shopify (SHOP.TO, SHOP.N) fell about six per cent last Tuesday after Photoshop software provider Adobe (ADBE.O) announced a deal to acquire Magento, which competes with Shopify in providing software to build and run online stores. The shares recovered most of their losses by the end of last week.

Finkelstein said Magento “for a long time has stopped innovating,” and added that his company has seen many merchants migrate from Magento to Shopify as a result.

Adobe’s play for Magento also highlights how competition in the sector is ramping up, he said.

“It’s interesting because the commerce space, in general, is heating up and the industry is going through a really wonderful moment right now,” Finkelstein said.

“In terms of the impact on Shopify, it will be negligible.”