When it was first announced that TikTok would have to sell itself off to US companies, it was revealed that Microsoft was the frontrunner to acquire the company. However, in a short statement put out by the company today, Microsoft has announced that they would no longer be acquiring the company.According to the statement, it was revealed that ByteDance was the one who cancelled the deal, and not Microsoft. “ByteDance let us know today they would not be selling TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft. We are confident our proposal would have been good for TikTok’s users, while protecting national security interests.”
The company adds, “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.”
It will be interesting to see how this plays out due to the new restrictions that China had put on the exporting of Chinese technology, where the government would need to give their express approval before that happens, which could complicate the sale of the company, as well as future sales of other Chinese-related technology or companies.
Filed in . Read more about Microsoft and Tiktok. Source: blogs.microsoft