Oracle Wins Bid for TikTok’s U.S. Operations
After rejecting Microsoft’s bid, ByteDance announced that it will partner with Oracle for TikTok’s U.S. operations. But it’s not clear exactly what that means: Will Oracle become the majority owner of TikTok’s U.S. operations? Or are the firms simply partnering to move TikTok to Oracle’s cloud servers?
We won’t find any answers from Oracle: The firm has yet to even acknowledge that a deal was made.
What is clear is why ByteDance turned down Microsoft: The software giant wanted to move TikTok’s source code to its U.S.-based Azure servers, including its core algorithms. But when China stepped in recently by refusing to export dual-use technologies, including those algorithms, outside of the country, Microsoft’s role was effectively ended. Oracle, meanwhile, was open to a much more limited partnership.
Anyway, from my perspective, this was a bullet dodged for Microsoft. And a big unknown for Oracle, about which I don’t care in the slightest.