Oracle, TikTok, WalMart, and Education

A Short Lesson on Deconstructing the News

Text from the original news release will appear in bold. My impressions are in italics. You must remember that I grew up in New York, a city known for snark. Even if I’m totally wrong, I will at least make a credible case and you might get a laugh.

The President has announced that ByteDance has received tentative approval for an agreement with the U.S. Government to resolve the outstanding issues, which will now include Oracle and Walmart together investing to acquire 20% of the newly formed TikTok Global business. The President is done with this issue, having upended several businesses and all the TikTok stars with his fits and starts about closing the app down. He’s milked it for the publicity, he now sees it in the hands of friends, and he could care less about the details.

As a part of the deal, TikTok is creating a new company called TikTok Global that will be responsible for providing all TikTok services to users in the United States and most of the users in the rest of the world. Today, the administration has conditionally approved a landmark deal where Oracle becomes TikTok’s secure cloud provider. Larry Ellison is no dope. Oracle went into this to get the cloud services contract, which gives it another big cloud client (it already has Zoom) and help it transition from moldy…