Apart from all the political discussions, I have no idea how the buyer is supposed to buy out just some regional markets.<p>Would development still be done by the original company, and the new owner just operates regional data centers? But without inter-connectivity? Without being able to influence development, or offer access to the developers for debugging and ops? Seems exceedingly unlikely.<p>Otherwise, do they get a code dump of a huge, complex code base, and are supposed to continue development on their own? With the original TikTok still operating in other parts of the world, and slowly diverging? I can't see that happening either.<p>Would they buy the brand name too, and the rest of the world would start using a different name?<p>That all seems pointless. The only thing that makes sense to me is taking over globally.
The huge hypocrisies here is that the sell must be done to a US company, not a European or an Indian one for instance but specifically a US one. I think that's a good lesson for the rest of the world, and a big warning.<p>Btw I think that following this and the Huawei little war, Apple is about to suffer from it. It's very probable that the Apple store will be forbidden in China. This will destroy Apple in China (impacting 18% Apple revenue), and it will at the same time preserve the image of China as the factory of the world.
This is just the beginning of a long war.
First it was getting Kodak to manufacture pharmaceutical chemicals. Now it's getting Oracle to buy tiktok. Is there a reason behind these baffling choices by the current administration? Why are they giving sweetheart deals to dinosaur companies? Is there some insider trading angle? Did those companies have better lobbyists?
Many here don't get the big picture. This acquisition makes total sense for Oracle. They'll be able to milk those influencers by charging TikTokers by how many cores they have on their phones and video audience size. </s>
Among all the feasible buyers, Oracle feels like the worst possible one. They are basically the real life version of Mr. Robot's Evil Corp, and they have a very bad record when it comes to acquisitions.
"According to those reports, Oracle was seriously considering buying TikTok's businesses in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand with investment firms, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital."<p>That's only 4 out of the "5 eyes".
This will be hilarious if it happens.<p>TikTok is terrible, Oracle is terrible.<p>At least it will increase the statistic on "3 Billion Devices Run Oracle Java"
TikTok feels a completely bizarre purchase for Oracle. Especially when abandoning the UK market.<p>They have no synergy, no experience, no moderation infrastructure, nothing. Do they want to be Yahoo?<p>Literally the only justification I can think of is that they want to keep the current administration happy and see this as a quasi-bribe, in the hope of getting more work in future from them in things they actually do. But that seems crazy given the likelihood (on the basis of polling, not making any judgements on whys or wherefores) that the administration will be gone in three months.
I can’t be alone in being more creeped out by Oracle than bytedance. So we’re giving a pathological collector of software control over a huge group of easily manipulated teenagers? Yikes!
As a Swede it feels so weird to read about eg. Trump meddling in such details in affairs like this.<p>In Sweden ministerial rule is outlawed: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministerial_governance</a><p>Our prime minister would not be allowed to have an opinion on any specific case like this, he would rather have to have opinions on the overall legal framework or such instead and leave the interpretation and application of the legal framework to the appropriate agencies.<p>To me that feels like the right way to go about things like this.
Can someone explain this potential acquisition for me? I cant think of a company more unlikely to acquire TikTok than Oracle. What business need could they fill for Oracle? Is this an effort to get into social media/massive data collection in a big way? Have they tried to acquire other social apps in the past?<p>I just don't get it.
This is shrewd of Ellison to do this. He knows he is the edge as he is a trump supporter. However it’s a terrible idea for tiktok to sell to oracle, a dinosaur that has no idea how to deal with consumer tech. I still don’t know why these companies want tiktok in the first place. It will be a nightmare to disconnect them from China and even then all the Chinese employees who dreamed up the tech are not coming, what’s the point?<p>Also I suspect this is just election pandering from trump. Initially he gave a 45 day “chance” for companies to find a buyer and then extended it by another 45 days. That takes it close to the election or past that date. At that point he doesn’t care and can push it under the rug just like the other “harsh stances “ against China.
ByteDance and their investors are going to get a nice cash infusion on their way to world domination outside the US and Oracle will promptly kill it like they did Sun.<p>US Zoomers will move to the next big thing.
When I was working in Oracle, there was a running gag that there were more full time attorneys employed by the company, than there were engineers.<p>Maybe that is what you need to run a business like that?
Public corporations are inherently immoral manipulators. We shouldn’t trust any of them with massive access to the nations “youth.” At least private companies have a chance of <i>maybe</i> having a founder with a heart who will turn down a sketchy way to make money
In my wildest dreams I could not create a stupider headline.<p>I guess the idea here is that Oracle destroys everything they buy, Trump hates Sarah Cooper, so he approves of this deal.
Aren't the countries banning TikTok becoming more like China by doing this? Plus Trump comments about US gov needs to get money from this sale sounds like plain bribe.<p>I have not seen a convincing proof that TikTok is more of a national security threat versus FB or Twitter. What am I missing? I am also more suspicious because along with TikTok, Wechat was banned while other investments in US by Tencent where not touched supposedly because it would impact American companies. Wechat is definitely insignificant to be a security threat.
TikTok should just let the US government ban them. Teenagers can figure out how to VPN to Mexico and it's better PR for TikTok. "So good the government won't let you use it" is better optics than "TikTok, now owned by some Boomer company". As a hip youngster myself, just the name Oracle makes me think of beige and grey Windows Vista era software and shitty enterprise software.