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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 ev

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.