Microsoft negotiated the acquisition of TikTok in the US

Tram Ho

A new report from Bloomberg said that Microsoft is negotiating to buy TikTok in the US. The deal will give the software giant a social network and simultaneously ease the pressure from the US government on ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the video sharing application.

According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is pressuring ByteDance to give up its stake in the US branch of TikTok, due to potential threats to national security when a Chinese company controls it. this application.

Microsoft đàm phán mua lại TikTok tại Mỹ - Ảnh 1.

In fact, before TikTok landed in the US market, there was a similar application called Musical.ly, but it did not create much reputation with users. In 2017, ByteDance acquired Musical.ly Inc and merged it with TikTok, making it a hit for US users – this is also the first Chinese app to do this.

As TikTok is becoming more and more popular and currently has 80 million users in the US, many officials in the US government are beginning to worry about the Chinese government’s ability to use the application to collect data. about American citizens. Recently, the US government also said considering a ban on this application. Meanwhile, economic adviser Larry Ludlow said that TikTok should separate from China and act as an independent American company to avoid this.

Acquiring TikTok will be an extraordinary feat of Microsoft, when it has a social network application that is widely used by young users with countless videos about dancing, lip-syncing and viral memes posted. steadily onto the platform. In the past, Microsoft also had an attractive deal that attracted a large community of users when it bought Minecraft – one of the most popular video games today.

Microsoft đàm phán mua lại TikTok tại Mỹ - Ảnh 2.

The company has also invested in social networks in the past, but has never developed its own service in this fertile field. In 2016, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn’s social work network for $ 26.2 billion. Meanwhile, TikTok, which has been downloaded 2.3 billion times globally, is currently valued from $ 30 billion to $ 50 billion.

Interestingly, TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance was founded in 2012 by Zhang Yiming, a former Microsoft employee.

Besides Microsoft, Bloomberg’s source also suggested that there could be other potential buyers, including Facebook, Apple, Amazon and Alphabet – when TikTok will be more suited to their business model. However, with the 4 companies being monitored closely for violating US antitrust regulations, this deal will be more complicated.

Refer to Bloomberg

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Source : Genk