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So, did Microsoft and Oracle both lose their bids for TikTok? Here’s what to know

Microsoft said its bid was rejected. But Oracle? That’s a different story.

By Herb Scribner Herb Scribnerhscribner@deseretnews.com
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This Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020 photo shows the icon for TikTok taken in New York. From the perspective of teens flooding onto TikTok, the Chinese-owned online video app is a major new outlet for self-expression, one proudly home to the silly, the loud and the weird. To others, though, the service is an unnerving black box that could be sharing information with the Chinese government, facilitating espionage, or just promoting videos and songs some parents consider lewd. (AP Photo)

This Tuesday, Feb. 25, 2020 photo shows the icon for TikTok taken in New York. From the perspective of teens flooding onto TikTok, the Chinese-owned online video app is a major new outlet for self-expression, one proudly home to the silly, the loud and the weird. To others, though, the service is an unnerving black box that could be sharing information with the Chinese government, facilitating espionage, or just promoting videos and songs some parents consider lewd. (AP Photo)

Associated Press

ByteDance said over the weekend that it will not sell TikTok to either Microsoft or Oracle, according to China state TV, NPR reports.

Microsoft said earlier Sunday that ByeDance — the parent company of TikTok — rejected a bid to buy the app, according to The Verge.

  • “ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s U.S. operations to Microsoft,” says Microsoft in a statement. “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.”
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Microsoft became one of the frontrunners to win the app — along with the company Oracle.

Here’s where it gets a little tricky

The Wall Street Journal reported Sunday that Oracle was negotiating with TikTok to become a “trusted tech partner” — and that’s about as much as we know. There’s no indication of what that means. But it suggests there was not a full purchase from Oracle.

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  • Oracle is a software company that sells database products and cloud computing services. So it’s unclear how that would work with TikTok.

I wrote about how Oracle and TikTok would work together. If Oracle owned the product, TikTok would allow Oracle to “use TikTok’s data about social interactions to benefit its cloud, data and advertising businesses,” according to The New York Times.