Software giant, Oracle won the bidding war for the U.S. operations of TikTok. This occurred after the U.S. government forced the parent of the popular meme-making video showing app (ByteDance) to sell it to a U.S. based firm or get banned.
Caught in A Crossfire
Founded by Chinese Entrepreneur Zhang Yiming, TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based tech giant. TikTok has been a spectacular growth story but has been caught in the conflict between the U.S. and China. President Donald Trump’s administration declared the social media platform a security threat.
The Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and other officials stated that TikTok is used to siphon and compromise user data.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Oracle will be announced as TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” in the United States.
This new development will put an end to the uncertainties surrounding the app in the United States, considering that the Trump administration is poised to clamp down on TikTok’s operations if the company didn’t comply with its demands (September 20).
But there is a confusion about which deadline TikTok will adhere to as Trump said last week “there will be no extension of the September 15 deadline. Trump had imposed a September 15 deadline for the deal to be sealed. When negotiations were complicated between TikTok and ByteDance due to technical reasons, there was notion of extending the deadline, but Trump insisted the date still stands.
Turned Down
On Sunday evening, Microsoft said its bid for the U.S. operations of TikTok has been rejected by the Beijing based tech giant, ByteDance.
“We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok users, while protecting national security interests,”
stating that Microsoft would make “significant changes” around security, privacy, online safety and combating disinformation.
“we look forward to seeing how the services evolve in these important area,” the statement added.
Fears around TikTok’s security has been a major issue for the app. It had issues in India, where with 58 other apps, it was banned for “national security and defence” issues according to reports.
Holger Mueller, an Analyst at Constellation Research stated in an interview with TechCrunch regarding Oracle’s acquisition of TikTok said:
“… if Microsoft gets TikTok, it would boost their usage by between 2% and 5%, while for Oracle it could be as much as 10%.”
Huge UserBase
With close to 100 million monthly active users, the company has risen from 91.9 million in June and doubled from the 39.9 million of last October. Since January 2018, TikTok had surged by 80% from 11.3 million users, with its global footprint reading 689 million users across more than 200 countries. Earlier in the pandemic, it teamed up with the social media video-making platform, Zoom.
While TikTok was built on the site Music. ly it has braced out from its initial spot of dance videos to become a factor in recent protests against racial injustice. It also had ambitions to compete with Snapchat, Twitter and other social media Giants in the advertising space.
