Oracle has won the bidding for the U.S. operations of TikTok, according to news reports from the The Wall Street Journal and others. WSJ said that the information came from people "familiar with the matter."
Walmart and Microsoft were also competing for the relationship with the Chinese video-sharing social networking service owned by ByteDance, a Beijing-based company. The deal was prompted by concerns about national security expressed by the Trump administration which told ByteDance in August that it would have to sell its U.S. operations to an American company or stop U.S. operations.
In a Sunday blog post, Microsoft announced it was out of the deal, stating:
"ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to 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. We look forward to seeing how the service evolves in these important areas."
The WSJ article noted that the arrangement between the companies is expected to position Oracle as TikTok’s “trusted tech partner” in the U.S., and that it is not likely to be structured as an actual sale.
For more information about Oracle, go to www.oracle.com.