So with the 15th of September which is the date that TikTok has to be sold to a US entity or be banned, there is news filtering out from The New York Times that Microsoft’s bid for TikTok has been rejected:
The owner of the Chinese app TikTok rejected an offer on Sunday from Microsoft to take over the firm’s U.S. operations, according to Microsoft officials and other people involved in the negotiations, as time runs out on an executive order from President Trump threatening to ban the popular app unless its American operations are sold.
Microsoft was seen as the American technology company with the deepest pockets to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations from its parent company, ByteDance, and with the greatest ability to address national security concerns that led to Mr. Trump’s order. The move leaves Oracle — one of the few Silicon Valley firms to publicly ally with Mr. Trump — as the sole publicly known remaining bidder for TikTok.
That likely means that Walmart who had teamed up with Microsoft is out as well. So if Oracle is the only one left in the game, can they win? And will they be able dodge the possibility that China will shut this down before they have a chance to pop the champagne seeing as they have changed the rules to allow that to happen? Stay tuned.
UPDATE: There’s also this from the same article:
ByteDance has indicated that Oracle would be its “technology partner,” but it was unclear whether that meant it would also take a majority ownership stake of the app, according to people involved in the negotiations.
Yeah, what the hell does that mean? If that means Oracle won, it doesn’t sound like it bought TikTok. But I am guessing that the association with Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Trump factored into this. The world will be waiting for details on this to see if this is workable for the Chinese and Trump.