It has been two months since the potential TikTok ban in the US was made public by the US President, and it seems the TikTok situation is about to be fixed soon with the acquisition TikTok of by Oracle.
Two months ago in July, US President, Donald Trump announced that TikTok would be banned due to security concerns amidst the US-China trade war. The US President repeatedly stated that TikTok being owned by Chinese company ByteDance might be sending the sensitive data to the Chinese Communist Party.
He also issued an executive order saying that US-based companies required to make a deal with TikTok for their acquisition in the US within 45 days to avoid the ban.
Microsoft was the first US-based company to show interest in buying TikTok, but soon Walmart and Oracle also joined in the list of brand interested in a potential acquisition.
A few weeks ago, TikTok parent company ByteDance rejected Microsoft’s offer for the acquisition. Also, they confirmed they had finalised a deal with Oracle as their “trusted technology partner.”
Even though the deal was finalised, the US Commerce Department issued an order stating the removal of TikTok from the Google PlayStore and Apple AppStore on November 22. However, the letter mentioned that TikTok has time till November 12 to resolve the security concerns of the US government.
Finally, TikTok released a statement stating that after the deal between ByteDance, Oracle, and Walmart is completed, all security concerns will be mitigated. According to the agreement, Oracle will host all US user data, and Walmart and Oracle will acquire a 20% share in TikTok.
To this deal, Trump responded by saying, “it has my blessings.” which shows that the US president is in favour of the deal.
It would be interesting to see if the deal is able to make a significant difference since the deal only ensures that the data of the US users will be hosted locally. As per TikTok, the user data was always kept in the country and not shared anywhere else country.
Of course, the US authorities have a close eye on TikTok’s operations to prevent the data to be sent to other countries.
This makes us think if TikTok will be able to re-enter the Indian market, as the Indian government banned the app in July over privacy and security concerns. But as of right now, there has been no such development in that regard.
Stay tuned at Tech2Stop for more updates.
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