Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
On the eve of the deadline for ByteDance to sell TikTok, there was much movement and little certainty. The whole thing seemed to come down to three words — “trusted tech partner” — and no one I’ve spoken to seems to know what they mean.
The most recent events were set in motion on Sunday afternoon, when ByteDance announced that it had rejected Microsoft’s bid to acquire TikTok in favor of an extremely vague partnership with a 43-year-old enterprise software company. The gist seems to be that Oracle would store American TikTok users’ data and keep it secure, but the app itself would continue to be owned and operated by ByteDance.
It could also include voting control over by TikTok by its US-based investors, the New York Times reported….