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NEW YORK, September 14, 2020 (AFP) – US tech giant Microsoft said on Sunday that its offer to buy TikTok was rejected, leaving Oracle as the sole remaining bidder before the imminent deadline for the video app of Chinese property sells or closes its US Operations.
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times reported that Oracle had won the bidding war, citing people familiar with the deal, though the company did not immediately confirm the matter to AFP.
Oracle’s offer would need approval from the White House and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a source told the Journal, and both sides believe it would satisfy US data security concerns.
TikTok has been at the center of a diplomatic storm between Washington and Beijing, with President Donald Trump giving Americans a deadline to stop doing business with TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, effectively forcing the company to sell. application to an American company.
Microsoft had indicated in early August that it was interested in acquiring the US operations of TikTok, but said on Sunday that the offer had been rejected.
“ByteDance let us know today that they would not sell TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft,” the US tech giant said in a statement.
“We are confident that our proposal would have been good for TikTok users, while protecting national security interests,” he added.
In early August, Trump issued an executive order stating that if a purchase agreement was not reached before September 20, the platform would have to shut down in the United States.
Trump claims that China could use TikTok to track the location of federal employees, create files on individuals to blackmail and conduct corporate espionage.
In late August, China’s Ministry of Commerce published new rules that could make it difficult for ByteDance to sell TikTok to a US entity by adding “civil use” to a list of technologies that are restricted for export.
ByteDance had committed to “strictly abide by” the new export regulations.
“We believe Microsoft would only buy TikTok WITH its core algorithm that the Chinese government and ByteDance were unwilling to compromise,” Wedbush analyst Daniel Ives said in a note.
“Given the need now to get the green light from Beijing after its export rules were changed a few weeks ago, the days of TikTok in the US are probably numbered with a shutdown now the next step,” the analyst said.
TikTok, downloaded 175 million times in the United States, is used by up to 1 billion people around the world to make wacky, short-form videos on their cell phones. It has repeatedly denied sharing data with Beijing.
Microsoft said it “would have made significant changes to ensure that the service meets the highest standards of security, privacy, online safety and the fight against disinformation.”
A deal with Microsoft could also have included Walmart, which joined forces with the tech giant in the negotiations.
Ives said that even with Microsoft out of the picture, “while Oracle is technically the remaining bidder, unwilling to sell its core algorithm, we don’t see any TikTok sales on the horizon.”
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