In a shocking twist of events, Microsoft now says its bid to buy the Chinese short video app TikTok’s US operations has been rejected but there’s more, TikTok parent company ByteDance has however settled for Oracle instead.
Nearly every pundit didn’t see this coming as the potential Microsoft takeover was backed by many in the administration and even the private sector but why the Chinese social media company rejected Microsoft’s bid is not clear at this time even though some have suggested some kind of political undertone. Oracle is one tech company that has publicly sided with the Trump administration on some issues before and you see, Oracle Founder Larry Ellison even did some fundraising for the American President early this year. So maybe the Chinese company made a sensible political move here or maybe it’s just a business decision because Microsft hasn’t exactly had a stellar record with some of its acquisitions, namely Nokia Lumia.
The US government under Donald Trump has said the Chinese app poses a grace security risk to the United States because of its ties to the Chinese government which they believe can access US users’ data whenever it wanted even though TikTok denied this and said its US user data is domiciled in the US and not China.
“ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft,” according to a statement released late Sunday by Microsoft. “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To do this, we would have made significant changes to ensure the service met the highest standards for security, privacy, online safety, and combatting disinformation, and we made these principles clear in our August statement,” they continued.
But while ByteDance may have settled for Oracle at this time, the deal still needs to be approved by the administration due to national security concerns but TikTok may have complicated the matter when it decided to take the Trump administration to court back in August.
W would have to wait and see how all of these plays out in the days ahead as the deadline the administration gave TikTok looms.
This is just that latest in the trade war between the United State and China who have been in this battle with the election of Donald Trump back in 2016. It looks like both Democrats and Republicans agree on the TikTok outright sale or ban in the US due to security concerns from China which means TikTok really do not have an ally in the government to look out for them and the choice before them was clear. Stop operating in the United States or sell your US business to an American company. Well they have settled for the latter and we’ll just wait and see how that goes.
