Here's some words we never expected to write: Oracle said to offer $10bn cash, $10bn shares for TikTok US – plus promise to share profit
- Reference: 1598561947
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/08/27/tiktok_oracle_sale/
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Oracle is [1]apparently the front-runner to acquire the US side of TikTok by offering $20bn in cash and stocks, according to showbiz news sheet The Wrap. We're told the database software giant is prepared to cough up $10bn in cash and $10bn in Oracle shares, and give the vid-sharing app's Chinese owner ByteDance half of the US operation's profits for the next two years.
ByteDance investors General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, which reportedly approached Oracle to suggest it buys TikTok's US wing, are said to be in contact with the White House to ensure the profit-sharing part of the deal meets the President's requirements. The Commander-in-Chief has [2]given TikTok three months to simply sell or spin off its US wing, or be shut down over "national security" fears – ByteDance might be ordered by Beijing to [3]spy on millions of American teens using the popular mobile app, it is claimed.
US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin apparently is in favor of the latest arrangement pitched by Larry Ellison's IT goliath. Oracle [4]threw its hat into the ring this month, and it was assumed it came about due to Ellison's close relationship with the Trump administration. "I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it," the President earlier said without any sort of logical justification.
The Silicon Valley mega-corp specializes in cloud infrastructure, middleware, and databases. Its last major acquisitions were in 2016 and 2010: [5]NetSuite for $9.6bn, and $7.4bn for [6]Sun Microsystems , respectively. The tech titan offers little to nothing in the way of consumer software.
TikTok CEO quits after less than three months in the job [7]READ MORE
Microsoft, on the other hand, had shown an [8]interest , though it turned out the Windows giant likely just wanted to take a major stake in ByteDance, which wouldn't satisfy the President. Now CNBC [9]reports Microsoft has picked up US supermarket giant Walmart as a partner in another attempt at brokering a deal.
TikTok this week [10]filed suit in an attempt to stop the forced divestment. ByteDance's big cheese Zhang Yiming is said to be dead against losing the American wing of his Zoomer-centric outfit.
Despite the suit, word is that a sale of the company's non-China operations is going to happen sooner rather than later: an offer could be proposed and mulled as early as next week. President Trump previously said he wants a big percentage of any buyout to be paid to the US Treasury for making the sell-off possible in the first place, as you can see below.
[11]Youtube Video
It is expected the eventual buyer will pick up the American, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand branches of TikTok – countries all part of the [12]Five Eyes group of nations who cooperate on intelligence, funnily enough.
TikTok told The Reg it had no comment. ®
Get our [13]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.thewrap.com/oracle-nears-20-billion-tiktok-deal-with-white-house-support-exclusive/
[2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2020/08/14/tiktok-ban-trump-orders-bytedance-sell-90-days/5588221002/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/07/us_wechat_tiktok_national_security_threats/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/19/trump_backs_oracle_as_tiktok/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2016/11/07/independent_netsuite_no_more/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2010/01/27/oracle_sun_preview
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/27/tiktok_ceo_kevin_mayer_quits/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/03/microsoft_confirms_tiktok_interest_after_nadella_trum_talks/
[9] https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/27/tiktok-likely-to-announce-sale-us-operations-in-the-coming-days.html
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/24/tiktok_to_sue_usa/
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYsWmomKsNs
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2020/06/03/defence_committee_5g_huawei_tom_cotton_senator/
[13] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I don't get it. 20bn for what is some naff video sharing app that makes money from advertising and slurping peoples data. Can it be that having information on your citizens is really worth that much? To what end?
If HP come in with a better offer don't take it!!!!
HP'd probably mess it up so badly that you wouldn't have to worry about what they were doing with your personal data - they wouldn't be able to find it.
"HP'd probably mess it up so badly"
They'd still claim they'd be cheated, sue and try to get whoever they could from the vendors jailed for wire fraud. Maybe the CEO who baled out thought they were going to bid.
I can't see that amount being justified by the IP nor any tangible assets they may have for a US operation. It can only be justified by the user base and the prospects for growing it further. But there's no guarantee that a use base can be retained let alone grown as MySpace demonstrated years ago. Somehow I can't see Oracle managing anything in a manner that keeps the user base regarding it as cool.
All of which prompts the thought of where do Social Networks go in the future? There seems to be a generational issue. A new cohort of prospective users is likely to reject the network their elders are using simply because that's what their elders are using, even if that means their elder siblings. Could the future be the ability to pop up new ones every few years? Could social network servers become commodity software? I rather suspect you could even cobble up something to get a new network off the ground out of a selection of NextCloud modules and some UI bells and whistles. SNaaS? SNSPs?
It's a strange and sad world...
... when an app has a value more than double the value of the whole Sun Microsystems....
Well, that would be one way for TikTok to die
year three Oracle licensing
So you have it on your Phone, we wrote an app that works on your telly and your IoT fridge, also you kids have phones, a laptop and tablets and you might run it on those as well so that means you owe us $300 per month (just $1 per virtual core). If you uninstall it you still have to pay as we won't let you delete your account and you might want to reinistate it at some point in the future.
What do you mean you didn't read the EULA before clicking on OK?
Just desserts
" it was assumed it came about due to Ellison's close relationship with the Trump administration"
It would be amusing if Bezos bought it. Maybe make it a subsidiary of his Washington Post.
So now the US government in addition to meddling in the affairs of every other country and telling them who they can and cannot do business with, has become a Mr Ten Percent deal fixer?
Seems to me to have descended to the level of the souks they seem to despise so much.