Oracle Zooms past rivals to run TikTok’s cloud, take stake alongside WalMart and ByteDance investors

Oracle has been formally announced as TikTok’s new technology partner and will also become a co-owner of a new entity that will run the made—in-China social network in the USA and other parts of the world. US president Donald Trump has backed the deal publicly. “Oracle Corporation announced today that it was chosen to become …

[Flocke Kroes]

Missed a bit

The key part of the deal required to get Trump's blessing was $5x10⁹ for an education fund that will teach American children Trump's real history of America, instead of everyone else's 'fake' history.

[this]

Re: Missed a bit

Expect Oracle to cough up $5billion? That's not how Oracle works. Sounds like another one of Trump's much vaunted 'deals'.

[Flocke Kroes]

Re: Trump's much vaunted 'deals'

I read the money coming from an IPO. Perhaps they will do some sort of BrisCon: shares are $1 but they cost you an extra $1 if you are caught with some when music stops.

[DS999]

Re: Missed a bit

I think the whole thing will be timed so that nothing happens until after the election, and if he loses the whole deal is quietly forgotten.

I also saw a story that Bytedance thinks the valuation should be at $60 billion, so the 20% that Oracle/Walmart are buying would cost $12 billion. The agreement they have right now is "in principle" meaning they haven't agreed on price. I don't see them agreeing it is worth anywhere near that much. Maybe Walmart could use it to harvest enough data / sell enough products to TikTok users, but unless Oracle is getting a backdoor deal where they store TikTok's data in their cloud at a $5 billion per year markup, I don't see how the math works for them.

The lifetime of most social media networks is pretty short. Vine was TikTok a few years ago, and where are they now? Why should anyone believe that kids aren't already moving on to the next social media network now that TikTok has been in the news so much lately and their parents are creating accounts or telling them "the president says that app is bad so delete it immediately or we'll take your phone away!"

[Michael Habel]

Re: Missed a bit

In that nightmare solution, only the Chinese win. You can kiss Taiwan goodbye, both Iran, and North Korea will get the Bomb, and likely use it. And Hillary will be the new VP. You can have that nightmare world we don't want it!

[Danny 2]

Re: Missed a bit

Well, Trump promised a wall on the Chinese border, and the Chinese would pay for it.

[DS999]

Re: Missed a bit

You Trumpies like to paint crazy doom and gloom scenarios. Nuclear war is more likely with Trump as president, he's the one openly talking about using them and how "powerful" they are. He's obviously compensating for huge shortcomings elsewhere. Probably also true for many of his supporters.

[Chris G]

I am so excited that this nasty foreign platform has been secured for vacuous American Teenaged Shufflers and Hip hoppers to strut their stuff with no risk of foreign governments capturing their data, now that data will be in the hands of trusted American Capitalists who will guard it carefully.

[Flocke Kroes]

They are not all vacuous

They got Trump to do a dejected walk of shame hence this tantrum over TikTok.

[NATTtrash]

Re: They are not all vacuous

Thanks to the Gregory Brothers, Trump gives TikTokkers really something to shake their booty to...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDBVYO_8p0U)

[NATTtrash]

I am so excited that this nasty foreign platform has been secured for vacuous American Teenaged Shufflers and Hip hoppers...

:D Indeed

And if the Shufflers are so "unhappy" to be outside US, new issues might be just on the horizon...

But Trump’s objection to TikTok was that it sends data to China and today’s news hasn’t explained who will end up controlling that data.

At first glance it appears that TikTok Global will keep it.

So, does this now mean that data will be sent to the US? Hmmm, wasn't there something about that?

"The news comes in the wake of an EU court ruling two months ago that transatlantic data protection arrangements - known as Privacy Shield - were "inadequate"."

(https://www.theregister.com/2020/09/10/facebook_ireland/)

[Flocke Kroes]

This has nothing to do with where data is stored

It is about all the empty seats at Trump's rally in Tulsa and a big pile of money to re-educate children so they do not spoil the key purpose of the presidency ever again: stadiums full of adoring fans cheering for Trump.

[Chris G]

Re: This has nothing to do with where data is stored

Stadiums full of adoring fans, patriotic flags draped everywhere, torch lit parades and people snatched off the streets by unmarked vehicles.

Now where have I seen that before?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Now where have I seen that before?

In just about every history of WW2 in Europe.

In particular a series called 'Adolf Hitler's War'.

Trump is supposed to be a real hot-shot businessman so why has China still got control of the TikTok Data?

Oracle in for $5B? Yeah and the IPO will raise $25B so leisure suit Larry wins again. The losers are... everyone else.

[Michael Habel]

Re: This has nothing to do with where data is stored

It must be nice to live in your world. Cause the only person to crawl out of his Hole, into a root of >5 is old Creepy Pedo Joe.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: This has nothing to do with where data is stored

Why are Trump supporters so fixated on paedophilia?

[DavCrav]

Re: This has nothing to do with where data is stored

"Creepy Pedo Joe."

Is that a standard South African insult 'pedo', or a libellous 'I mean a paedophile' 'pedo'?

[Tom 38]

Re: This has nothing to do with where data is stored

I don't keep up with US politics, which candidate is the one who won't give a DNA sample to prove he didn't rape a 13 yr old girl?

[Morten Bjoernsvik]

Oracle Cloud

So now the total number of customers are: 20

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oracle_Cloud#Companies_using_Oracle_Cloud

[mark l 2]

There is still no real explanation on how its going to be handled if a user of Tiktok global communicated with Tiktok China. Who gets to handle the data? Or will Tiktok China become a stand-alone network without the ability to without the ability to be used outside China?

Good to see how good old Team American world police have now managed to free the world's teenagers from those commie bstards, so now all that juicy data can be hoovered up by Walmart and Oracle instead.

[skeptical i]

great firewall?

Would China prefer to have a "TikTok for China" separate from a "TikTok for the rest of the world"? It seems they have "for China" search engines and social-media widgets, will TikTokChina just be another? It might also be easier for TikTokRestOfWorld to not have to jump whatever content hurdles China would put up.

Also curious, "Oracle will be responsible ... to protect all U.S. user data.” -- from whom? From the U.S. Gubmint? From Amazon, Target, and other online vendors that compete with Wallymart? Not sure how reassuring this is.

Too bad the voting age is 18 here, Trump might have gotten a lock on the teenager vote by "saving" the social media trinket du jour.

[Anonymous Coward]

Still, why anybody outside US should trust a US company handle their privacty?

All EU - US privacy agreement (Safe Harbour, Privacy Shield) have been struck down because it's clear in the actual situation US laws can't warrant privacy....

“The limitations on the protection of personal data arising from the domestic law of the United States on the access and use by US public authorities . . . are not circumscribed in a way that satisfies requirements that are essentially equivalent to those required under EU law” said the European Court of Justice.

Probably EU must ban TikTok until it's sold to SAP <G>

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Still, why anybody outside US should trust a US company handle their privacty?

"Probably EU must ban TikTok until it's sold to SAP"

I came here to say something very similar, the EU needs to force a sale of this new Tik-Oracle-Tok entities EU operations to Crapita or similar and keep the data safe;y in the EU!!!11!!1!One!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Still, why anybody outside US should trust a US company handle their privacty?

Just I'm afraid companies like Capita are no longer in the EU.... and I believe UK will soon sign a deal with US to allow simple data transfer there just like it did with Japan. Probably both most one way transfers....

[Fruit and Nutcase]

Re: Still, why anybody outside US should trust a US company handle their privacty?

"Tik-Oracle-Tok"

Tik-O-Tok ?

[a_yank_lurker]

Into the Fire

So Tik-Tok is sold from one sleaze bag company to another sleaze bag company. But in fairness to the Minions their competition was as equally sleazy.

[xyz]

If I was sneaky...

I'd wait until the Americans bought tiktok and then release a new version called toktik and carry on as before. Never mind... There's only 45 days more for this one term loser, so the Chinese will probably just wait until then.

[DavCrav]

Re: If I was sneaky...

"There's only 45 days more for this one term loser, so the Chinese will probably just wait until then."

*120.

[Anonymous Coward]

Capitalism..

Smelling very much like any other totalitarian regime. True colours.

BUY this foreign company, now! Yes sir!

World has gone mad.

[Anonymous Coward]

And a Judge has stopped the WeChat

ban from going in effect.

Trump 1 Others 1

Still plenty of time to get him in handcuffs before November

[Doctor Syntax]

This move places the whole of TikTok outside of China into the grasp of the CLOUD Act so it must fall foul of GDPR in the EU as the Privacy Figleaf has shrivelled to the extent that it can't even pretend to protect users' data.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's the end of TikTok (US) then..

Come on, you have AND Oracle AND Trump in the mix.

That's Microsoft level incompetence combined with overcharging for mere breathing, on steroids.

Nothing good will come of this.

[Tim Almond]

"technical decision"

Sure, sure (insert gif of Jennifer Lawrence nodding)

Oracle would have to be in a different league of performance or price to AWS or Azure before I'd go anywhere near them. I suspect Oracle offered Zoom and TikTok really nice deals for all of this. Maybe they're even losing money just to seem relevant to the market.

It won't work because everyone hates Oracle. If your company is running Oracle, it's because it's a mission-critical system from the 1990s that everyone is too scared to migrate. No-one likes the tools, no-one thinks it's great tech. Even your boss hates them because of their sales guys.

[You aint sin me, roit]

Lobbying...

Larry "Hey Don, how come you didn't see that I got that JEDI deal? I contributed good money, I expect some quid pro quo!"

Donald "Out of my hands Larry, some leftist judge said no. But I can get you a slice of the TikTok action."

Larry "Cool what's the deal?"

Donald "You pay 5 billion and host the app for free."

Larry "And I get all that private data that's being slurped by the app... It's a deal!"