Bytedance has decided not to vend the US operation of TikTok operations to Microsoft according to the reports. The company has decided to collaborate with Oracle as a technical partner.

After Donald Trump’s announcement to ban TikTok in the US last month, ByteDance has been in talks to sell its US business. The Trump Administration had given a deadline till 15th September to cease the business with TikTok’s parent company ByteDance or it will close in the US. The deadline was set for a potential pressured sale of the tech company’s part to an American bidder.

ByteDance chose Oracle as a technology partner to alleviate US concerns. According to the reports, it will be a restructuring instead of sale with Oracle managing TikTok’s US user data. It is yet not disclosed how much ByteDance and its investors would continue to own TikTok’s US operations.

ByteDance will have to take approval from Beijing and Washington for the deal. It is yet not sure if the President, who requires a US tech firm to own most of TikTok operations in the US, will give approval for the proposal.

While the Trump Administration has declined to comment, Oracle and ByteDance did not respond to requests for comment immediately.

Beijing issued fresh restrictions on tech exports in late August that would require companies to take approval from the government which can take around 30 days. The rules were last updated in 2008 and had been the same since then until late August and are believed to be done so to delay the TikTok’s sale to US buyers.

A few technologies were eliminated from the list of controlled exports which included vaccine technologies, but twenty-three new additions were made including AI-related interfaces, content recommendation analysis, and voice recognition

The US President claimed that China might use TikTok to track the federal employees’ locations and develop records on people for blackmail purposes and conduct corporate surveillance.

The company assured that it has not provided any data of US users to the Chinese government and Beijing has called Trump’s restriction as political.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/sep/14/tiktok-bytedance-to-partner-with-oracle-in-us-after-rejecting-microsoft-bid