Microsoft says TikTok rejected its offer, Oracle wins bid

Microsoft on Sunday said that its offer to buy TikTok was rejected and thus Oracle was left as the sole remaining bidder ahead of a looming decline for the Chinese owned video app to sell or shut down its US operations.

Microsoft on Sunday said that its offer to buy TikTok was rejected and thus Oracle was left as the sole remaining bidder ahead of a looming decline for the Chinese owned video app to sell or shut down its US operations.

Microsoft said in a statement that the “Chinese owner of TikTok ByteDance has informed it that they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft.

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“We are confident that our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests. To this we would have made significant changes to ensure that the service met the higher standards for security, privacy, online safety and combatting disinformation and we made these principles clear in our August statement”. Microsoft said.

The Wall Street Journal said in a report that Oracle is set to be announced as TikTok’s trusted tech partner in the US and the deal is likely not to be structured as an outright sale.

The next step is for the White House and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US to approve the deal. In an executive order signed last month, USA president Donald Trump said that TikTok would be blocked in the USA if it did not sell its US operations to an American company by September 20.

Microsoft said that the only way it would protect the privacy of TikTok users in the USA and prevent Beijing from using the app for disinformation was by to take over the computer codes and algorithms. Oracle has not yet disclosed what it would do with TikTok’s underlying technology.