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Oracle Wins Bid for TikTok in U.S.

474 points by doctoboggan 6y ago

doctoboggan 6y ago
This feels like such a strange acquisition for Oracle. Does anyone have insight on how Oracle envisions the TikTok brand and userbase adding value to the rest of the company?
- wrs 6y ago
  Oracle needs cloud wins. I doubt they care about the actual functionality of TikTok. (Other than its Trump-annoyance functionality that is enabling this whole transaction, of course.)
  - deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- Firebrand 6y ago
  Oracle becomes a trusted tech partner of Bytedance: “ByteDance started opening data centers in India and the US in 2019. This may be strictly for internal purposes, but its possible they plan to launch a cloud hosting service. ByteDance acquired Terark in 2019 which allows databases to run 200x faster by reading compressed data at 50% of the cost. If they launch an external service, the selling point could be faster processing and access to some of ByteDance’s AI tech. A cloud service combined with enterprise software (and eventually a phone or other hardware) would take a page out of Microsoft’s approach of bundling multiple products and selling them top down through the C- Suite.” https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-understanding https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-underst...
- stale2002 6y ago
  > Does anyone have insight on how Oracle envisions the TikTok brand and userbase adding value to the rest of the company? Sure. The answer is that there is no such significant added value to Oracle, specifically, but TikTok itself will end up selling for bargain basement prices, meaning that added value isn't necessary for an acquisition to make sense.
- dodobirdlord 6y ago
  I think this makes sense. Oracle isn't really acquiring TikTok, just its "US Operations". They presumably won't be responsible for developing algorithms, the app, or the backend, and will instead be running the service and hosting all of the data generated in the United States. Looked at this way, it's more like an unusually deep relationship with a cloud services provider than a buyout, and a huge win of business and reputation for Oracle Cloud.
  - howlgarnish 6y ago
    But is it really a huge reputational win? Us geeks know that Tiktok's scale is huge, but your average bank is not going to be terribly impressed that Oracle is now hosting an app still widely viewed as some random frivolous teen twerk thing.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      I'd bet that TikTok continues expanding and becomes viewed as more than that.
    - xvector 6y ago
      > but your average bank is not going to be terribly impressed that Oracle is now hosting an app still widely viewed as some random frivolous teen twerk thing. Absolutely not. If anything, the young user base makes TikTok more valuable. It will be viewed as an analogue to Facebook before it exploded.
      - howlgarnish 6y ago
        I'm not doubting TikTok's own value, I'm questioning the assertion that owning TikTok will have reputational benefits for Oracle as a cloud hosting provider.
        xvector 6y ago
        It’s an application with about a billion users. The benefits are tremendous. Banks are not dumb, they do their research before valuing corps
- tootie 6y ago
  It's worse than Yahoo acquiring Tumblr. And that killed Tumblr. How much of TikTok is porn right now?
- throwcahnoish 6y ago
  Everyone is making the usual Oracle joke once again... but Oracle owns BlueKai, one of the largest data collection companies. That is the answer. TikTok will feed straight into BlueKai. That data is the value it'll add to their company.
- deleted 6y ago
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airstrike 6y ago
Oracle, really? M&A needs strategic fit to make real sense (for buyers other than financial sponsors), and I don't see any You don't just pick the highest paying bid, necessarily
- tupputuppu 6y ago
  It needs strategic fit FOR THE BUYER, not the seller. Besides, M&A is more driveen ny management hubris than business value anyway.
  - airstrike 6y ago
    It also matters for the seller, to some extent, because the employees will now work at Oracle. If you're the CEO of TikTok, and now you're "Chief Social Media Officer" or whatever title the buyer will think up, would you rather hold that job at Oracle, Microsoft or somewhere else? Sure, if you're the shareholder, you may not care what happens to your former employees, but the buyer should care that the value of the asset they just paid for is inclusive of human capital, and that value depends on the opinion of the people working on the seller's side
non-entity 6y ago
TikTok Enterprise (tm)
- pavlov 6y ago
  Oracle Funny-Clock-Sound Personal Video Suite for Youth Management (Single-Core License)
  - kstrauser 6y ago
    (Single-Thread License. They don’t want people ripping them off with multithreaded CPUs.)
    - to11mtm 6y ago
      They saw an article about Heterogeneous ARM cores in smartphones and just couldn't help themselves.
    - Yaa101 6y ago
      You mean single-threat license?
- deleted 6y ago
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DogOfTheGaps 6y ago
This is likely explanation why Oracle was able to acquire TikTok's operation, despite the fact it does not seem to be a good fit at all: https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-president-trump-and-larry-ellisons-relationship-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-president-trump-...
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  I don’t think “being able to acquire” an organization or operations requires a “good fit,” but the reason for wanting to would.
- jhanschoo 6y ago
  That's just speculation. Recall that Microsoft was rejected by TikTok leaving Oracle as the sole contender. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microsoft-oracle-bytedance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microso...
  - Termious 6y ago
    > Weeks later, China issued new regulations that would essentially bar TikTok from transferring its technology to a foreign buyer without explicit permission from the Chinese government. > The Chinese regulations helped scuttle the effort by Microsoft, which said the only way it could both protect the privacy of TikTok users in the United States and prevent Beijing from using the app as a venue for disinformation was to take over the computer source code underlying the app, and the algorithms that determine what videos are seen by the 100 million Americans who use it each month. This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another, or Oracle wouldn't be the last man standing. This is going to be a shitshow.
    - kergonath 6y ago
      > This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another Oracle also has ties to Trump. This stinks.
kstrauser 6y ago
My prediction: Oracle couldn’t care less about TikTok as an entity, but wants their IP so they can sue everyone else who has a recommendation engine. No, it won’t make any sense, but much of that organization’s moves are inscrutable to me.
- ComputerGuru 6y ago
  TikTok is about the furthest you would look for something to pass off as novel. If they were buying some decrepit social network precursor which no one ever used or can recall, that might still make more sense under this hypothesis. As it is, I’m sure Oracle already owns IP pertaining to recommendation engines that even predates TikTok’s existence!
- tonetheman 6y ago
  THIS THIS THIS. Oracle is a greedy leech on the world and tech in general. Tiktok has something they want to use to sue other companies. Oracle knows almost no other way to do business.
  - AmericanChopper 6y ago
    The parent comment is just a super low effort HN trope. Company everybody hates does something so you have to dream up some silly reason that it fits into the existing narrative about them. There is literally no reason to think this could possibly happen, apart from “Oracle is bad and they do bad IP lawsuits”. Tik Tok doesn’t have any novel IP that could support a theory like this, and Oracle isn’t even getting any IP in this deal.
    - tonetheman 6y ago
      Doooood. Literally Oracle bought Sun to sue Google. It is not a troll comment. The company on the whole has used IP to attack other companies in the past. It is a well known fact there is no troll about that. And I would think the magic algorithm that comes along with Tiktok is IP. Maybe you know the list of patents Bytedances holds? If they do not have IP around that algorithm they are idiots. Anyway it will be interesting to watch.
pgrote 6y ago
What cloud provider does TikTok use now?
- djeiasbsbo 6y ago
  Oracle Cloud? No seriously, that's actually a thing!
- pcbro141 6y ago
  I know they use Fastly CDN
- dartdartdart 6y ago
  They signed $800 million with google cloud a couple of years ago. So probably that with a mix of others
- suyash 6y ago
  Oracle Cloud Infrastructure it seems to me otherwise what's the point.
baybal2 6y ago
That was unexpected. What Larry will do with it? Sell Oracle to teenagers? What an irony given Oracle's own roots in USA's espionage agencies.
- lowiqengineer 6y ago
  “Irony” or “makes complete sense?”
ChuckMcM 6y ago
That's hilarious, really. In my experience if you want to kill a company have Oracle acquire it. (that may be a bit too cynical)
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > (that may be a bit too cynical) "You actually don't need to be open-minded about Oracle, you are wasting the openness of your mind [...] As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle." - Bryan Cantrill, https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2046 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2046
  - closeparen 6y ago
    “Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.”
    - konjin 6y ago
      What's more human than wanting to make as much money as possible for the least amount of work?
      - holografix 6y ago
        That made me lol in a bathroom cubicle.
      - oxygenjoe 6y ago
        Honestly I would take that oracle job described above in a heartbeat
      - kohtatsu 6y ago
        My favourite humans see money as a means to an end.
rektide 6y ago
Hail overlord of social media moderation Larry Ellison. First posssttttt.
llacb47 6y ago
Plain text of the article for those behind paywall: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/llacb47/2beb750b56bc98a5daa8a1257f27a2c3/raw/ec9ea9a9d73dea8017c6e165ac5bb45b202f4550/wsj-tiktok.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/llacb47/2beb750b56bc98a5d...
- pabs3 6y ago
  For the WSJ you can just append this to the URL to bypass the paywall: ?mod=djemalertNEWS
  - throwawaywrench 6y ago
    any idea why that is the case?
    - pabs3 6y ago
      None, sorry.
turdnagel 6y ago
ByteDance has said publicly that they won't be selling their algorithm (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-13/bytedance-tells-u-s-it-won-t-sell-tiktok-s-algorithm-scmp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-13/bytedance...) -- so there's no IP angle here. What is Oracle really getting out of the deal?
- TaylorAlexander 6y ago
  They can pass the user data to the US government.
  - mike_h 6y ago
    It’s not just that. Now the Trump administration has control of the world’s best propaganda tool. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/oracle-tiktok-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/oracle-tiktok-...
    - nogabebop23 6y ago
      It's pretty easy for trump to have someone else ghost write his tweets; that' won't work for his tiktok videos...
      - outside1234 6y ago
        Its not that angle - imagine being able to turn down anything that is not flattering to him and turn up anything that is unflattering to Joe Biden. This is the real risk.
        logicchains 6y ago
        Isn't that just the reverse of what Facebook and Google do currently?
      - hindsightbias 6y ago
        80 million US users will be seeing one side of the story in November.
sitkack 6y ago
Did China just get access to Oracle and Oracle Cloud?
- garmaine 6y ago
  No, they just revealed that they already had access.
- suyash 6y ago
  good for American company, better that data stays in US than in China
jrott 6y ago
Well Facebook has to be happy at least. Oracle has to be the company least likely to run TikTok well.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  probably not because it's basically a Pyrrhic victory long-term. It'll drastically increase the chances of Facebook facing those issues in other countries, which would be devastating to the global business model of US software firms, and Facebook might get regulators attention again if the only significant competitor dies. I think Zuckerberg even said as much.
- sjg007 6y ago
  Oracle is more if a conglomerate these days. I would focus on cloud, ads, data tools as the main reasons to have this business line.
elheffe80 6y ago
No one thinks this has to do with the relationship between the US President and Oracle? Amazon is throwing a fit because they weren’t chosen to be the Pentagons cloud provider. Now this. It’s favoritism.
- tessierashpool 6y ago
  Silicon Valley letting this happen without even complaining a little: very disturbing.
  - dartdartdart 6y ago
    I remember tech CEOs complains when h1B visas got cut bc they loved the cheap labor. Silicon valley only jumps in if it benefits their bottom line or for good PR
    - rnet85 6y ago
      “Cheap labor” people with visa in FANG companies get paid the same salary as the non visa people, and it was the FANG ceos who complained, so I’m not sure I understand your comment.
  - xvector 6y ago
    TikTok is a black sheep because as soon as you defend it against the US, you’re painted as a Chinese shill advocating for Uighur genocide. It’s no wonder that Silicon Valley is uninterested in defending it, despite the fact that this sort of deal is likely to severely fracture how tech services are treated by governments in the future.
    - jacobush 6y ago
      It's sad that we are even looking to what stance tech companies have on human rights issues. The government should have sanctioned China severely already, tariffs, you name it.
- ehsankia 6y ago
colesantiago 6y ago
The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. Oracle's latest acquisition [0] by is a consumer video creation company called sauce.video [1] It could be that Oracle is looking for a new challenge in video technology to demonstrate the capabilities of their cloud services, even Zoom chosen them for their infrastructure [2]. [0] https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/ https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/ [1] https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/sauce-video/ https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/sauce-video/ [2] https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html
- dralley 6y ago
  > The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. Seriously? There were plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Microsoft "back in the day". Less of them now, but hating Microsoft in the 90s and 00s was not "without reason".
  - colesantiago 6y ago
    > Less of them now, but hating Microsoft in the 90s and 00s was not "without reason". Never said that, read what I said again.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
      > The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. (emphasis mine) Okay, what am I missing? That looks like exactly the same statement.
  - tessierashpool 6y ago
    yeah, there's a huge difference between "emotional" and "emotional without reason." operating in bad faith will indeed make people emotional, but for a very good reason.
  - 6y ago
angel_j 6y ago
Oracle must have made the most concessions of control to ByteDance. Oracle gets a popular brand, data, and a strong entry into social networks.
outside1234 6y ago
OH THANK GOD THAT MICROSOFT DIDN'T WIN. -Microsoft Employee
aptsurdist 6y ago
I’m sure Trump is thrilled about this since Larry Ellison is a Trump supporter who fund raises for him.
- Olumde 6y ago
  Trump probably okayed the deal, or made it happen. Now Tiktok has to please not one but two authoritarian governments.
- dartdartdart 6y ago
  Any chance that Biden will reverse it if he gains office? Seems anti-competitive if they didn't prove sending data back to China
bostonsre 6y ago
They probably didn't want the app to survive and be competitive in the US. They didn't want a company capable of nurturing it and expanding it to buy it (Microsoft). They were contemplating just killing, at least this way they get a pay out.
throw_m239339 6y ago
It's very bizarre. What could Oracle possibly gain from TikTok from a business perspective? It seems so far away from their core business. MySQL, SUN, I kind of understand, but TikTok? Why didn't say Google or Amazon make a bid?
- xvector 6y ago
  > What could Oracle possibly gain from TikTok from a business perspective? Further credibility with the US government as they deepen their ties with the NSA and US intelligence. Leads to winning more massive government contracts and more favor from future administrations. Oracle is ahead of the game. It has realized that ingratiating itself with the government is a recipe for long-term success.
jeffbee 6y ago
I wonder how the deal is structured with respect to employee stock compensation. I was negotiating with them late last year and most of the comp was going to be in funny-money of the bytedance variety, which is both highly illiquid and hilariously valued. If US tiktok employees get converted to shares of Oracle, that's a substantial upgrade. Of course, they work for Oracle now, but still.
rladd 6y ago
Here's what I am guessing it is: - Bytedance retains some ownership and control of the app and the algorithms - Oracle runs the entire back end on their infrastructure - Oracle guarantees to the US government that no data is going back to China (because they control the release of the app and control the back end) - This satisfies the USA's (supposed) national security concerns and also satisfies China because TikTok is not actually being "sold" to a US company.
- freedomben 6y ago
  Reasonable guess, although I think it would be impossible to guarantee that no data is going back to China.
  - rladd 6y ago
    Oracle can audit the app code and also probably sandbox the back end in such a way that they can be fairly sure things aren't escaping, at least not on a large scale.
- AznHisoka 6y ago
  What about the CDN that TikTok uses in Fastly? Will it be replaced by Oracle?
  - ETHisso2017 6y ago
    spotted the daytrader lmao
  - tick_tock_tick 6y ago
    Almost certainly why would they use a third party for stuff they offer themselves?
- redwood 6y ago
  Impressive speculation: your theory is the most compelling in seeing here
throwaway423342 6y ago
not strange - TikTok ruined Trumps rally - Facebook is threatened by TikTok growth in US - Zuck testifies before congress, pointing fingers at China and companies like TikTok - Zuck met Trump, shaked hands under the table - Trump asks TikTok to sell - to Oracle.... best US company to curb TikTok growth - Facebook does nothing about Trump posts - Profit for Trump, less competitor for Zuck - Things probably staged. What is one reason TikTok "chooses" Oracle over Microsoft? edit: formatting
chasd00 6y ago
One thing about Oracle, either it prints money for Ellison or it ceases to exist. I suspect tiktok will be no more in about 2 years.
outside1234 6y ago
"Hello Fellow Students!"
flowerlad 6y ago
Depending on what part of TikTok Oracle runs this may actually be a good arrangement that works well for both companies. If Oracle has anything to do with the app itself or its functionality then TikTok will not do well. But if Oracle just manages the data and cloud operations then this may indeed work out well for both companies. Oracle is competent when it comes to data and cloud. That's their core business after all.
Fej 6y ago
(Written for another post regarding the same topic, copied here) Oracle purchasing a stake in ByteDance, and maybe handling US operations? It sounds like one of those deals which will end up as a loss in a few years and a write-down. The first comparison that comes to mind is the Tumblr sale, when Yahoo wrote-down $712 million, although the companies are quite different. However, the similarity is the culture difference between the parent and subsidiary companies - Yahoo couldn't figure out how to turn Tumblr profitable as they had no successful examples prior, as far as I remember. Oracle and TikTok could not be more different: Oracle is a cold cloud technology supplier with no business advertising to teens. If Oracle wishes to only be the cloud partner holding US data (a possibility mentioned in the article) it's possible that it could work out, but whether it is possible is dependent on politics and potentially who is elected as the next President.
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perseusprime11 6y ago
This should not be a surprise. If you want to monkey around with the codebase and the algorithm, which company is easier to dupe? Microsoft or Oracle?
d0100 6y ago
This probably means that the CPP will still continue to gather the data, despite this "ownership" change.
throwaway189262 6y ago
Hahaha! Has Oracle ever run a B2C product in their existence? Or anything ad supported? Or anything at all that you don't buy with a contract? I can't see any scenario where this ends well. Reminds me of Dyson's electric car ambitions. Or the time I considered living in a van, I was quite drunk that day.
mxpxrocks10 6y ago
serious question: does anyone think this is a good idea? is there an argument that this could be a good thing?
someluccc 6y ago
In a way this is brilliant from ByteDance. Sell for the most money to a company that will never grow or operate tiktok in a way that can threaten you outside the US.
- cnst 6y ago
  If you read the latest statement from Microsoft of how they'd have made sure to implement all the latest "privacy" features for TikTok, it's actually a really great news that ByteDance knows better. What was the most visible outcome of Microsoft's takeover of GitHub? Some software engineers who happen to live in a wrong peninsula in Europe had their GitHub accounts shutdown with no advance notice and no recourse. So much for the rule of law and for social coding! I think it's great that people from all over the world have a choice of who to give their data to. If there'd be a worldwide antitrust body, US would already be in trouble! Remember when China blocked Twitter and whatever else? Yeah, aren't we the China now?!
syspec 6y ago
This reminds me of when Yahoo! bought Tumblr.
neonate 6y ago
https://archive.is/55ZvG https://archive.is/55ZvG
- cnst 6y ago
  https://archive.is/55ZvG https://archive.is/55ZvG > Microsoft earlier Sunday said it was notified earlier in the day of the decision by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. > “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests,” the company said in a statement. “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.” Yeah, as a self-appointed member of the worldwide trade commission, enforcing the antitrust rules and regulations, I'm really happy that the Microsoft's bid has been declined!
jonstewart 6y ago
Safra Catz is relatively close to the Trump administration.
samizdis 6y ago
Here's the arstechnica take on this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/oracle-one-of-donald-trumps-favorite-companies-wins-tiktok-deal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/oracle-one-of-do...
Balgair 6y ago
Ellison is a big time donor for Donny. It never was about 'best fit' or "national security'. It's corruption, clear as day. https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-billionaire-larry-ellison-is-fundraising-for-donald-trump-2020-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-billionaire-larry-ell...
- jjcon 6y ago
  Given that there are basically only two parties in the US there is a pretty good chance you will find a Trump donor/supporter in every c-suite (and a Biden supporter for that matter). Don’t need to go full conspiracy for no reason.
  - pcbro141 6y ago
    It's not a far out conspiracy theory. TikTok was already going all in with Google Cloud as their tech partner (which is a more obvious choice than Oracle) and was ready to go all in on with Google until Donald reiterated, publicly, his demand that the US "get a cut" of any deal. To Donald, the US "getting a cut" and his friends/himself profiting are likely synonymous. His personal interest and the national interest are the same, in his mind.
    - shripadk 6y ago
      > TikTok was already going all in "All in": What is the guarantee that their entire infrastructure will be on Google Cloud? You are assuming a lot about how their backend infrastructure is structured. > was ready to go all in on with Google until Donald reiterated, publicly, his demand that the US "get a cut" of any deal Define "all in". For me, all in is when the entire company gets bought out by Google. > his friends/himself profiting are likely synonymous. His personal interest and the national interest are the same, in his mind. Again, unsubstantiated claims a.k.a conspiracy theory. The fact is that his net worth has actually fallen drastically: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-14/trump-s-net-worth-in-office-is-down-300-million-in-10-decline https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-14/trump-s-n... If his motive is enriching himself/friends that should reflect in his/friends net worth.
maxdo 6y ago
That's a very smart move, they sell it to the least competent bidder possible. If microsoft buys it, you might have a global competitor with big number of Hollywood stars as influencers. With oracle it will be a slow death but with enough money not die anytime soon.
wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 6y ago
Crony capitalism, anyone? "Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison earlier this year threw a fundraiser at his house for the president. Chief Executive Safra Catz also worked on the executive committee for the Trump transition team in 2016."
ChicagoDave 6y ago
Not sure if everyone knows this, but Oracle owns and rents the largest personal information database in the world. They have more than Facebook or so it’s rumored.
- bfelbo 6y ago
  Can you share more on this?
  - Nemo_bis 6y ago
    > Oracle Corp. has spent five years and billions of dollars getting really good at following people around the internet. Six acquisitions reportedly totaling at least $3 billion since 2014 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/oracle-didn-t-see-the-data-reckoning-coming https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/oracle-di...
    - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
      More importantly, they own Datalogix, which aggregates loyalty card details for retail. This means that Oracle are legitimately the best people to answer the question of which half of your advertising was wasted for offline sales. Weird, right?
jordache 6y ago
so what? oracle acquires a flavor of the month platform.. it'll be a "remember when" type of story, in 2-3 years, when everyone is just starting to forget tiktok
throw665439 6y ago
It appears Oracle is a “tech partner” in this acquisition. Isn’t this virtually identical to the Chinese model? For example, NetEase is the tech partner for Blizzard, GCBD for Apple’s iCloud, Sinnet for AWS, who does Microsoft partner with? This appears to be a working model that the Chinese government will support. I wonder if other nations will start to adopt it.
- rfoo 6y ago
  Yes. My Chinese friends are joking on this "California on Cloud" scenario. (GCBD is called "Guizhou on Cloud" in Chinese)
yalogin 6y ago
This is such a huge clusterfuck, I don't know why anyone would buy it. Microsoft is lucky to have gotten away from it. What does acquiring the US operations even mean? Do they get code and if so who is going to take it forward? The engineers are all byte dance employees. They have a few engineers outside of China but the bulk of the talent is in China, that is where the innovation is coming from. Without them it doesn't make sense to get the operations. The user base is going to drastically fall and it will be a write-off in 2yrs time. All of the money is wasted.
- jjcon 6y ago
  > that is where the innovation is coming from Wasn’t tiktok just running a huge campaign about how all the work is done in the US, it just happens to be hq-ed in China?
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    Which is true, for TikTok. It's not true for ByteDance though, which appears to be where the algorithms came from.
- PeterStuer 6y ago
  You think oracle is paying for this without it being rewarded some nice matching government contracts or other investments/deals to match the expense?
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Yep, exactly like how Microsoft was compensated for buying Skype. This stuff is not without precedent. Skype was not sponsored by a foreign power but by liberal minded founders using P2P technology. Still a "national security" threat (actually a hegemony threat) so it had to be addressed somehow. Microsoft was happy to help. It also helps explain a little the hapless treatment of the Skype brand under Microsoft. Not that Microsoft hasn't bought companies and mismanaged the assets before, but they really didn't know what to do with Skype.
gchokov 6y ago
That’s very smart of Oracle. They will introduce ERPs to kids from early age. I heard it’s a dream of 10years old to get into the enterprise.
Fjolsvith 6y ago
A win for all the conservatives on TikTok. Larry is a big Trump supporter.
golem14 6y ago
It would be interesting to know why Oracle won. Did they offer more money ? Or is TikTok convinced that Oracle won't be able to do something decent with the acquisition ? Other than start fights with facebook etc over tiktok lookalikes ? Oracle will be great at that. "If we can't have it, then we want to make sure NOONE will profit from it, and we burn that space to the ground in the US" ? The cynic in me suspects that this is so, Oracle looked like a weird pick from the start. It would have been super interesting to be part of that negotiation.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  Mark Ellison is the only leader in tech who openly runs fundraisers for Trump. The cynic in me suspects that's the entirety of the reasoning.
  - mcintyre1994 6y ago
    This is of course supposed to say Larry Ellison but I can't edit.
fqye 6y ago
Well rumor circulating in China's VC / startup circle is that this ISN'T true either.
Nemo_bis 6y ago
On The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/14/tiktok-bytedance-to-partner-with-oracle-in-us-after-rejecting-microsoft-bid https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/14/tiktok-by... On Reuters: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-autos/europe-britains-carmakers-warn-of-110-billion-euro-hard-brexit-bill-idUKKBN2640YV https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-autos/europe-br...
jacquesm 6y ago
And all that because of a bunch of kids disrupting a rally. It's disgraceful that US companies would agree to participate in this forced sale. What's next? Volkwagen? After all, if this is now a legal way to do business I see absolutely no reason why it would stop at TikTok.
znpy 6y ago
"how do you do, fellow kids?"
msravi 6y ago
Global Times (China's CCP-run English Language News Portal) claims that ByteDance will NOT sell TikTok-US operations to Oracle or Microsoft. Edit: They're probably being technically correct about "sell", but not so much about "operations". https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1305410279283388417 https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/13054102792833884...
tannhaeuser 6y ago
It needs to be said that US admin interfering/forcing this deal citing "national security" concerns in a situation where US companies already dominate social platforms sends a very, very strong signal for other countries to demand social data to be stored on their respective soil as well. It's the end of the illusion of a competitive market in the "internet" and will have far-reaching consequences. In which world would EU, India, South/Mid America give a free pass to US oligopolies capturing almost all advertising revenue?
- thewarrior 6y ago
  The US threatened to impose tariffs on India for trying to do this. US is all free markets as long as they can win when they cannot they bully.
- rasz 6y ago
  is this signal traveling back in time? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-amazon-cloud/amazon-sells-off-china-cloud-assets-as-tough-new-rules-bite-idUSKBN1DE0CL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-amazon-cloud/amazon...
habosa 6y ago
If I were Facebook I'd offer to pay for Oracle to buy it. What better way to kill off an upstart social media app popular with young people than to have Oracle run it! Zuck must be thrilled.
gandutraveler 6y ago
Chinese law requires that algorithms are not exported out of china. So how would their recommendation algo work which requires processing all this data. Will that run on Oracle cloud in US or in China ? And how does it stop any bytedance engineer from logging into the cloud machine or looking into the data directly
Datsundere 6y ago
First thing they're going to do is install their slow and really difficult to use BI tools and the db that takes hours to download. It's insane when I tried installing oracle db and BI tools on my laptop. It was the worst software installation process in my life.
pkz 6y ago
Oracle Enterprise TikTok. Licensing experts from Oracle will visit kids and check if they are properly licensed. Multi-core phone owners will pay extra unless their family is on Oracle Premier Support.

474 points by doctoboggan 6y ago

This feels like such a strange acquisition for Oracle. Does anyone have insight on how Oracle envisions the TikTok brand and userbase adding value to the rest of the company?

wrs 6y ago
Oracle needs cloud wins. I doubt they care about the actual functionality of TikTok. (Other than its Trump-annoyance functionality that is enabling this whole transaction, of course.)
- deleted 6y ago
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Firebrand 6y ago
Oracle becomes a trusted tech partner of Bytedance: “ByteDance started opening data centers in India and the US in 2019. This may be strictly for internal purposes, but its possible they plan to launch a cloud hosting service. ByteDance acquired Terark in 2019 which allows databases to run 200x faster by reading compressed data at 50% of the cost. If they launch an external service, the selling point could be faster processing and access to some of ByteDance’s AI tech. A cloud service combined with enterprise software (and eventually a phone or other hardware) would take a page out of Microsoft’s approach of bundling multiple products and selling them top down through the C- Suite.” https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-understanding https://turner.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-tiktok-and-underst...
stale2002 6y ago
> Does anyone have insight on how Oracle envisions the TikTok brand and userbase adding value to the rest of the company? Sure. The answer is that there is no such significant added value to Oracle, specifically, but TikTok itself will end up selling for bargain basement prices, meaning that added value isn't necessary for an acquisition to make sense.
dodobirdlord 6y ago
I think this makes sense. Oracle isn't really acquiring TikTok, just its "US Operations". They presumably won't be responsible for developing algorithms, the app, or the backend, and will instead be running the service and hosting all of the data generated in the United States. Looked at this way, it's more like an unusually deep relationship with a cloud services provider than a buyout, and a huge win of business and reputation for Oracle Cloud.
- howlgarnish 6y ago
  But is it really a huge reputational win? Us geeks know that Tiktok's scale is huge, but your average bank is not going to be terribly impressed that Oracle is now hosting an app still widely viewed as some random frivolous teen twerk thing.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    I'd bet that TikTok continues expanding and becomes viewed as more than that.
  - xvector 6y ago
    > but your average bank is not going to be terribly impressed that Oracle is now hosting an app still widely viewed as some random frivolous teen twerk thing. Absolutely not. If anything, the young user base makes TikTok more valuable. It will be viewed as an analogue to Facebook before it exploded.
    - howlgarnish 6y ago
      I'm not doubting TikTok's own value, I'm questioning the assertion that owning TikTok will have reputational benefits for Oracle as a cloud hosting provider.
      - xvector 6y ago
        It’s an application with about a billion users. The benefits are tremendous. Banks are not dumb, they do their research before valuing corps
tootie 6y ago
It's worse than Yahoo acquiring Tumblr. And that killed Tumblr. How much of TikTok is porn right now?
throwcahnoish 6y ago
Everyone is making the usual Oracle joke once again... but Oracle owns BlueKai, one of the largest data collection companies. That is the answer. TikTok will feed straight into BlueKai. That data is the value it'll add to their company.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

airstrike 6y ago

Oracle, really? M&A needs strategic fit to make real sense (for buyers other than financial sponsors), and I don't see any You don't just pick the highest paying bid, necessarily

tupputuppu 6y ago
It needs strategic fit FOR THE BUYER, not the seller. Besides, M&A is more driveen ny management hubris than business value anyway.
- airstrike 6y ago
  It also matters for the seller, to some extent, because the employees will now work at Oracle. If you're the CEO of TikTok, and now you're "Chief Social Media Officer" or whatever title the buyer will think up, would you rather hold that job at Oracle, Microsoft or somewhere else? Sure, if you're the shareholder, you may not care what happens to your former employees, but the buyer should care that the value of the asset they just paid for is inclusive of human capital, and that value depends on the opinion of the people working on the seller's side

non-entity 6y ago

TikTok Enterprise (tm)

pavlov 6y ago
Oracle Funny-Clock-Sound Personal Video Suite for Youth Management (Single-Core License)
- kstrauser 6y ago
  (Single-Thread License. They don’t want people ripping them off with multithreaded CPUs.)
  - to11mtm 6y ago
    They saw an article about Heterogeneous ARM cores in smartphones and just couldn't help themselves.
  - Yaa101 6y ago
    You mean single-threat license?
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

DogOfTheGaps 6y ago

This is likely explanation why Oracle was able to acquire TikTok's operation, despite the fact it does not seem to be a good fit at all: https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-president-trump-and-larry-ellisons-relationship-2020-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/look-inside-president-trump-...

ComputerGuru 6y ago
I don’t think “being able to acquire” an organization or operations requires a “good fit,” but the reason for wanting to would.
jhanschoo 6y ago
That's just speculation. Recall that Microsoft was rejected by TikTok leaving Oracle as the sole contender. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microsoft-oracle-bytedance.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/technology/tiktok-microso...
- Termious 6y ago
  > Weeks later, China issued new regulations that would essentially bar TikTok from transferring its technology to a foreign buyer without explicit permission from the Chinese government. > The Chinese regulations helped scuttle the effort by Microsoft, which said the only way it could both protect the privacy of TikTok users in the United States and prevent Beijing from using the app as a venue for disinformation was to take over the computer source code underlying the app, and the algorithms that determine what videos are seen by the 100 million Americans who use it each month. This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another, or Oracle wouldn't be the last man standing. This is going to be a shitshow.
  - kergonath 6y ago
    > This makes it clear that China has ties to Oracle management in some form or another Oracle also has ties to Trump. This stinks.

kstrauser 6y ago

My prediction: Oracle couldn’t care less about TikTok as an entity, but wants their IP so they can sue everyone else who has a recommendation engine. No, it won’t make any sense, but much of that organization’s moves are inscrutable to me.

ComputerGuru 6y ago
TikTok is about the furthest you would look for something to pass off as novel. If they were buying some decrepit social network precursor which no one ever used or can recall, that might still make more sense under this hypothesis. As it is, I’m sure Oracle already owns IP pertaining to recommendation engines that even predates TikTok’s existence!
tonetheman 6y ago
THIS THIS THIS. Oracle is a greedy leech on the world and tech in general. Tiktok has something they want to use to sue other companies. Oracle knows almost no other way to do business.
- AmericanChopper 6y ago
  The parent comment is just a super low effort HN trope. Company everybody hates does something so you have to dream up some silly reason that it fits into the existing narrative about them. There is literally no reason to think this could possibly happen, apart from “Oracle is bad and they do bad IP lawsuits”. Tik Tok doesn’t have any novel IP that could support a theory like this, and Oracle isn’t even getting any IP in this deal.
  - tonetheman 6y ago
    Doooood. Literally Oracle bought Sun to sue Google. It is not a troll comment. The company on the whole has used IP to attack other companies in the past. It is a well known fact there is no troll about that. And I would think the magic algorithm that comes along with Tiktok is IP. Maybe you know the list of patents Bytedances holds? If they do not have IP around that algorithm they are idiots. Anyway it will be interesting to watch.

pgrote 6y ago

What cloud provider does TikTok use now?

djeiasbsbo 6y ago
Oracle Cloud? No seriously, that's actually a thing!
pcbro141 6y ago
I know they use Fastly CDN
dartdartdart 6y ago
They signed $800 million with google cloud a couple of years ago. So probably that with a mix of others
suyash 6y ago
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure it seems to me otherwise what's the point.

baybal2 6y ago

That was unexpected. What Larry will do with it? Sell Oracle to teenagers? What an irony given Oracle's own roots in USA's espionage agencies.

lowiqengineer 6y ago
“Irony” or “makes complete sense?”

ChuckMcM 6y ago

That's hilarious, really. In my experience if you want to kill a company have Oracle acquire it. (that may be a bit too cynical)

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
> (that may be a bit too cynical) "You actually don't need to be open-minded about Oracle, you are wasting the openness of your mind [...] As you know people, as you learn about things, you realize that these generalizations we have are, virtually to a generalization, false. Well, except for this one, as it turns out. What you think of Oracle, is even truer than you think it is. There has been no entity in human history with less complexity or nuance to it than Oracle." - Bryan Cantrill, https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2046 https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=2046
- closeparen 6y ago
  “Do not make the mistake of anthropomorphizing Larry Ellison.”
  - konjin 6y ago
    What's more human than wanting to make as much money as possible for the least amount of work?
    - holografix 6y ago
      That made me lol in a bathroom cubicle.
    - oxygenjoe 6y ago
      Honestly I would take that oracle job described above in a heartbeat
    - kohtatsu 6y ago
      My favourite humans see money as a means to an end.

rektide 6y ago

Hail overlord of social media moderation Larry Ellison. First posssttttt.

llacb47 6y ago

Plain text of the article for those behind paywall: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/llacb47/2beb750b56bc98a5daa8a1257f27a2c3/raw/ec9ea9a9d73dea8017c6e165ac5bb45b202f4550/wsj-tiktok.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/llacb47/2beb750b56bc98a5d...

pabs3 6y ago
For the WSJ you can just append this to the URL to bypass the paywall: ?mod=djemalertNEWS
- throwawaywrench 6y ago
  any idea why that is the case?
  - pabs3 6y ago
    None, sorry.

turdnagel 6y ago

ByteDance has said publicly that they won't be selling their algorithm (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-13/bytedance-tells-u-s-it-won-t-sell-tiktok-s-algorithm-scmp https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-13/bytedance...) -- so there's no IP angle here. What is Oracle really getting out of the deal?

TaylorAlexander 6y ago
They can pass the user data to the US government.
- mike_h 6y ago
  It’s not just that. Now the Trump administration has control of the world’s best propaganda tool. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/oracle-tiktok-trump.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/04/technology/oracle-tiktok-...
  - nogabebop23 6y ago
    It's pretty easy for trump to have someone else ghost write his tweets; that' won't work for his tiktok videos...
    - outside1234 6y ago
      Its not that angle - imagine being able to turn down anything that is not flattering to him and turn up anything that is unflattering to Joe Biden. This is the real risk.
      - logicchains 6y ago
        Isn't that just the reverse of what Facebook and Google do currently?
    - hindsightbias 6y ago
      80 million US users will be seeing one side of the story in November.

sitkack 6y ago

Did China just get access to Oracle and Oracle Cloud?

garmaine 6y ago
No, they just revealed that they already had access.
suyash 6y ago
good for American company, better that data stays in US than in China

jrott 6y ago

Well Facebook has to be happy at least. Oracle has to be the company least likely to run TikTok well.

Barrin92 6y ago
probably not because it's basically a Pyrrhic victory long-term. It'll drastically increase the chances of Facebook facing those issues in other countries, which would be devastating to the global business model of US software firms, and Facebook might get regulators attention again if the only significant competitor dies. I think Zuckerberg even said as much.
sjg007 6y ago
Oracle is more if a conglomerate these days. I would focus on cloud, ads, data tools as the main reasons to have this business line.

elheffe80 6y ago

No one thinks this has to do with the relationship between the US President and Oracle? Amazon is throwing a fit because they weren’t chosen to be the Pentagons cloud provider. Now this. It’s favoritism.

tessierashpool 6y ago
Silicon Valley letting this happen without even complaining a little: very disturbing.
- dartdartdart 6y ago
  I remember tech CEOs complains when h1B visas got cut bc they loved the cheap labor. Silicon valley only jumps in if it benefits their bottom line or for good PR
  - rnet85 6y ago
    “Cheap labor” people with visa in FANG companies get paid the same salary as the non visa people, and it was the FANG ceos who complained, so I’m not sure I understand your comment.
- xvector 6y ago
  TikTok is a black sheep because as soon as you defend it against the US, you’re painted as a Chinese shill advocating for Uighur genocide. It’s no wonder that Silicon Valley is uninterested in defending it, despite the fact that this sort of deal is likely to severely fracture how tech services are treated by governments in the future.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    It's sad that we are even looking to what stance tech companies have on human rights issues. The government should have sanctioned China severely already, tariffs, you name it.
ehsankia 6y ago

colesantiago 6y ago

The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. Oracle's latest acquisition [0] by is a consumer video creation company called sauce.video [1] It could be that Oracle is looking for a new challenge in video technology to demonstrate the capabilities of their cloud services, even Zoom chosen them for their infrastructure [2]. [0] https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/ https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/ [1] https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/sauce-video/ https://www.oracle.com/corporate/acquisitions/sauce-video/ [2] https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html

dralley 6y ago
> The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. Seriously? There were plenty of legitimate reasons to hate Microsoft "back in the day". Less of them now, but hating Microsoft in the 90s and 00s was not "without reason".
- colesantiago 6y ago
  > Less of them now, but hating Microsoft in the 90s and 00s was not "without reason". Never said that, read what I said again.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > The hate around Oracle seems very emotional without reason and reminds me of the hate around Microsoft back in the day. (emphasis mine) Okay, what am I missing? That looks like exactly the same statement.
- tessierashpool 6y ago
  yeah, there's a huge difference between "emotional" and "emotional without reason." operating in bad faith will indeed make people emotional, but for a very good reason.
- 6y ago

angel_j 6y ago

Oracle must have made the most concessions of control to ByteDance. Oracle gets a popular brand, data, and a strong entry into social networks.

outside1234 6y ago

OH THANK GOD THAT MICROSOFT DIDN'T WIN. -Microsoft Employee

aptsurdist 6y ago

I’m sure Trump is thrilled about this since Larry Ellison is a Trump supporter who fund raises for him.

Olumde 6y ago
Trump probably okayed the deal, or made it happen. Now Tiktok has to please not one but two authoritarian governments.
dartdartdart 6y ago
Any chance that Biden will reverse it if he gains office? Seems anti-competitive if they didn't prove sending data back to China

bostonsre 6y ago

They probably didn't want the app to survive and be competitive in the US. They didn't want a company capable of nurturing it and expanding it to buy it (Microsoft). They were contemplating just killing, at least this way they get a pay out.

throw_m239339 6y ago

It's very bizarre. What could Oracle possibly gain from TikTok from a business perspective? It seems so far away from their core business. MySQL, SUN, I kind of understand, but TikTok? Why didn't say Google or Amazon make a bid?

xvector 6y ago
> What could Oracle possibly gain from TikTok from a business perspective? Further credibility with the US government as they deepen their ties with the NSA and US intelligence. Leads to winning more massive government contracts and more favor from future administrations. Oracle is ahead of the game. It has realized that ingratiating itself with the government is a recipe for long-term success.

jeffbee 6y ago

I wonder how the deal is structured with respect to employee stock compensation. I was negotiating with them late last year and most of the comp was going to be in funny-money of the bytedance variety, which is both highly illiquid and hilariously valued. If US tiktok employees get converted to shares of Oracle, that's a substantial upgrade. Of course, they work for Oracle now, but still.

rladd 6y ago

Here's what I am guessing it is: - Bytedance retains some ownership and control of the app and the algorithms - Oracle runs the entire back end on their infrastructure - Oracle guarantees to the US government that no data is going back to China (because they control the release of the app and control the back end) - This satisfies the USA's (supposed) national security concerns and also satisfies China because TikTok is not actually being "sold" to a US company.

freedomben 6y ago
Reasonable guess, although I think it would be impossible to guarantee that no data is going back to China.
- rladd 6y ago
  Oracle can audit the app code and also probably sandbox the back end in such a way that they can be fairly sure things aren't escaping, at least not on a large scale.
AznHisoka 6y ago
What about the CDN that TikTok uses in Fastly? Will it be replaced by Oracle?
- ETHisso2017 6y ago
  spotted the daytrader lmao
- tick_tock_tick 6y ago
  Almost certainly why would they use a third party for stuff they offer themselves?
redwood 6y ago
Impressive speculation: your theory is the most compelling in seeing here

throwaway423342 6y ago

not strange - TikTok ruined Trumps rally - Facebook is threatened by TikTok growth in US - Zuck testifies before congress, pointing fingers at China and companies like TikTok - Zuck met Trump, shaked hands under the table - Trump asks TikTok to sell - to Oracle.... best US company to curb TikTok growth - Facebook does nothing about Trump posts - Profit for Trump, less competitor for Zuck - Things probably staged. What is one reason TikTok "chooses" Oracle over Microsoft? edit: formatting

chasd00 6y ago

One thing about Oracle, either it prints money for Ellison or it ceases to exist. I suspect tiktok will be no more in about 2 years.

outside1234 6y ago

"Hello Fellow Students!"

flowerlad 6y ago

Depending on what part of TikTok Oracle runs this may actually be a good arrangement that works well for both companies. If Oracle has anything to do with the app itself or its functionality then TikTok will not do well. But if Oracle just manages the data and cloud operations then this may indeed work out well for both companies. Oracle is competent when it comes to data and cloud. That's their core business after all.

Fej 6y ago

(Written for another post regarding the same topic, copied here) Oracle purchasing a stake in ByteDance, and maybe handling US operations? It sounds like one of those deals which will end up as a loss in a few years and a write-down. The first comparison that comes to mind is the Tumblr sale, when Yahoo wrote-down $712 million, although the companies are quite different. However, the similarity is the culture difference between the parent and subsidiary companies - Yahoo couldn't figure out how to turn Tumblr profitable as they had no successful examples prior, as far as I remember. Oracle and TikTok could not be more different: Oracle is a cold cloud technology supplier with no business advertising to teens. If Oracle wishes to only be the cloud partner holding US data (a possibility mentioned in the article) it's possible that it could work out, but whether it is possible is dependent on politics and potentially who is elected as the next President.

deleted 6y ago

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perseusprime11 6y ago

This should not be a surprise. If you want to monkey around with the codebase and the algorithm, which company is easier to dupe? Microsoft or Oracle?

d0100 6y ago

This probably means that the CPP will still continue to gather the data, despite this "ownership" change.

throwaway189262 6y ago

Hahaha! Has Oracle ever run a B2C product in their existence? Or anything ad supported? Or anything at all that you don't buy with a contract? I can't see any scenario where this ends well. Reminds me of Dyson's electric car ambitions. Or the time I considered living in a van, I was quite drunk that day.

mxpxrocks10 6y ago

serious question: does anyone think this is a good idea? is there an argument that this could be a good thing?

someluccc 6y ago

In a way this is brilliant from ByteDance. Sell for the most money to a company that will never grow or operate tiktok in a way that can threaten you outside the US.

cnst 6y ago
If you read the latest statement from Microsoft of how they'd have made sure to implement all the latest "privacy" features for TikTok, it's actually a really great news that ByteDance knows better. What was the most visible outcome of Microsoft's takeover of GitHub? Some software engineers who happen to live in a wrong peninsula in Europe had their GitHub accounts shutdown with no advance notice and no recourse. So much for the rule of law and for social coding! I think it's great that people from all over the world have a choice of who to give their data to. If there'd be a worldwide antitrust body, US would already be in trouble! Remember when China blocked Twitter and whatever else? Yeah, aren't we the China now?!

syspec 6y ago

This reminds me of when Yahoo! bought Tumblr.

neonate 6y ago

https://archive.is/55ZvG https://archive.is/55ZvG

cnst 6y ago
https://archive.is/55ZvG https://archive.is/55ZvG > Microsoft earlier Sunday said it was notified earlier in the day of the decision by TikTok parent ByteDance Ltd. > “We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests,” the company said in a statement. “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.” Yeah, as a self-appointed member of the worldwide trade commission, enforcing the antitrust rules and regulations, I'm really happy that the Microsoft's bid has been declined!

jonstewart 6y ago

Safra Catz is relatively close to the Trump administration.

samizdis 6y ago

Here's the arstechnica take on this: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/oracle-one-of-donald-trumps-favorite-companies-wins-tiktok-deal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/09/oracle-one-of-do...

Balgair 6y ago

Ellison is a big time donor for Donny. It never was about 'best fit' or "national security'. It's corruption, clear as day. https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-billionaire-larry-ellison-is-fundraising-for-donald-trump-2020-2?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/oracle-billionaire-larry-ell...

jjcon 6y ago
Given that there are basically only two parties in the US there is a pretty good chance you will find a Trump donor/supporter in every c-suite (and a Biden supporter for that matter). Don’t need to go full conspiracy for no reason.
- pcbro141 6y ago
  It's not a far out conspiracy theory. TikTok was already going all in with Google Cloud as their tech partner (which is a more obvious choice than Oracle) and was ready to go all in on with Google until Donald reiterated, publicly, his demand that the US "get a cut" of any deal. To Donald, the US "getting a cut" and his friends/himself profiting are likely synonymous. His personal interest and the national interest are the same, in his mind.
  - shripadk 6y ago
    > TikTok was already going all in "All in": What is the guarantee that their entire infrastructure will be on Google Cloud? You are assuming a lot about how their backend infrastructure is structured. > was ready to go all in on with Google until Donald reiterated, publicly, his demand that the US "get a cut" of any deal Define "all in". For me, all in is when the entire company gets bought out by Google. > his friends/himself profiting are likely synonymous. His personal interest and the national interest are the same, in his mind. Again, unsubstantiated claims a.k.a conspiracy theory. The fact is that his net worth has actually fallen drastically: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-14/trump-s-net-worth-in-office-is-down-300-million-in-10-decline https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-14/trump-s-n... If his motive is enriching himself/friends that should reflect in his/friends net worth.

maxdo 6y ago

That's a very smart move, they sell it to the least competent bidder possible. If microsoft buys it, you might have a global competitor with big number of Hollywood stars as influencers. With oracle it will be a slow death but with enough money not die anytime soon.

wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa 6y ago

Crony capitalism, anyone? "Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison earlier this year threw a fundraiser at his house for the president. Chief Executive Safra Catz also worked on the executive committee for the Trump transition team in 2016."

ChicagoDave 6y ago

Not sure if everyone knows this, but Oracle owns and rents the largest personal information database in the world. They have more than Facebook or so it’s rumored.

bfelbo 6y ago
Can you share more on this?
- Nemo_bis 6y ago
  > Oracle Corp. has spent five years and billions of dollars getting really good at following people around the internet. Six acquisitions reportedly totaling at least $3 billion since 2014 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/oracle-didn-t-see-the-data-reckoning-coming https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-06/oracle-di...
  - disgruntledphd2 6y ago
    More importantly, they own Datalogix, which aggregates loyalty card details for retail. This means that Oracle are legitimately the best people to answer the question of which half of your advertising was wasted for offline sales. Weird, right?

jordache 6y ago

so what? oracle acquires a flavor of the month platform.. it'll be a "remember when" type of story, in 2-3 years, when everyone is just starting to forget tiktok

throw665439 6y ago

It appears Oracle is a “tech partner” in this acquisition. Isn’t this virtually identical to the Chinese model? For example, NetEase is the tech partner for Blizzard, GCBD for Apple’s iCloud, Sinnet for AWS, who does Microsoft partner with? This appears to be a working model that the Chinese government will support. I wonder if other nations will start to adopt it.

rfoo 6y ago
Yes. My Chinese friends are joking on this "California on Cloud" scenario. (GCBD is called "Guizhou on Cloud" in Chinese)

yalogin 6y ago

This is such a huge clusterfuck, I don't know why anyone would buy it. Microsoft is lucky to have gotten away from it. What does acquiring the US operations even mean? Do they get code and if so who is going to take it forward? The engineers are all byte dance employees. They have a few engineers outside of China but the bulk of the talent is in China, that is where the innovation is coming from. Without them it doesn't make sense to get the operations. The user base is going to drastically fall and it will be a write-off in 2yrs time. All of the money is wasted.

jjcon 6y ago
> that is where the innovation is coming from Wasn’t tiktok just running a huge campaign about how all the work is done in the US, it just happens to be hq-ed in China?
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Which is true, for TikTok. It's not true for ByteDance though, which appears to be where the algorithms came from.
PeterStuer 6y ago
You think oracle is paying for this without it being rewarded some nice matching government contracts or other investments/deals to match the expense?
- jacobush 6y ago
  Yep, exactly like how Microsoft was compensated for buying Skype. This stuff is not without precedent. Skype was not sponsored by a foreign power but by liberal minded founders using P2P technology. Still a "national security" threat (actually a hegemony threat) so it had to be addressed somehow. Microsoft was happy to help. It also helps explain a little the hapless treatment of the Skype brand under Microsoft. Not that Microsoft hasn't bought companies and mismanaged the assets before, but they really didn't know what to do with Skype.

gchokov 6y ago

That’s very smart of Oracle. They will introduce ERPs to kids from early age. I heard it’s a dream of 10years old to get into the enterprise.

Fjolsvith 6y ago

A win for all the conservatives on TikTok. Larry is a big Trump supporter.

golem14 6y ago

It would be interesting to know why Oracle won. Did they offer more money ? Or is TikTok convinced that Oracle won't be able to do something decent with the acquisition ? Other than start fights with facebook etc over tiktok lookalikes ? Oracle will be great at that. "If we can't have it, then we want to make sure NOONE will profit from it, and we burn that space to the ground in the US" ? The cynic in me suspects that this is so, Oracle looked like a weird pick from the start. It would have been super interesting to be part of that negotiation.

mcintyre1994 6y ago
Mark Ellison is the only leader in tech who openly runs fundraisers for Trump. The cynic in me suspects that's the entirety of the reasoning.
- mcintyre1994 6y ago
  This is of course supposed to say Larry Ellison but I can't edit.

fqye 6y ago

Well rumor circulating in China's VC / startup circle is that this ISN'T true either.

Nemo_bis 6y ago

On The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/14/tiktok-bytedance-to-partner-with-oracle-in-us-after-rejecting-microsoft-bid https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/14/tiktok-by... On Reuters: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-autos/europe-britains-carmakers-warn-of-110-billion-euro-hard-brexit-bill-idUKKBN2640YV https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-autos/europe-br...

jacquesm 6y ago

And all that because of a bunch of kids disrupting a rally. It's disgraceful that US companies would agree to participate in this forced sale. What's next? Volkwagen? After all, if this is now a legal way to do business I see absolutely no reason why it would stop at TikTok.

znpy 6y ago

"how do you do, fellow kids?"

msravi 6y ago

Global Times (China's CCP-run English Language News Portal) claims that ByteDance will NOT sell TikTok-US operations to Oracle or Microsoft. Edit: They're probably being technically correct about "sell", but not so much about "operations". https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/1305410279283388417 https://twitter.com/globaltimesnews/status/13054102792833884...

tannhaeuser 6y ago

It needs to be said that US admin interfering/forcing this deal citing "national security" concerns in a situation where US companies already dominate social platforms sends a very, very strong signal for other countries to demand social data to be stored on their respective soil as well. It's the end of the illusion of a competitive market in the "internet" and will have far-reaching consequences. In which world would EU, India, South/Mid America give a free pass to US oligopolies capturing almost all advertising revenue?

thewarrior 6y ago
The US threatened to impose tariffs on India for trying to do this. US is all free markets as long as they can win when they cannot they bully.
rasz 6y ago
is this signal traveling back in time? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-amazon-cloud/amazon-sells-off-china-cloud-assets-as-tough-new-rules-bite-idUSKBN1DE0CL https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-amazon-cloud/amazon...

habosa 6y ago

If I were Facebook I'd offer to pay for Oracle to buy it. What better way to kill off an upstart social media app popular with young people than to have Oracle run it! Zuck must be thrilled.

gandutraveler 6y ago

Chinese law requires that algorithms are not exported out of china. So how would their recommendation algo work which requires processing all this data. Will that run on Oracle cloud in US or in China ? And how does it stop any bytedance engineer from logging into the cloud machine or looking into the data directly

Datsundere 6y ago

First thing they're going to do is install their slow and really difficult to use BI tools and the db that takes hours to download. It's insane when I tried installing oracle db and BI tools on my laptop. It was the worst software installation process in my life.

pkz 6y ago

Oracle Enterprise TikTok. Licensing experts from Oracle will visit kids and check if they are properly licensed. Multi-core phone owners will pay extra unless their family is on Oracle Premier Support.