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ByteDance Choose Partnership With Oracle Instead Of Selling Tiktok's US Biz: Reports


While shunning the idea of selling off the short video sharing app TikTok’s United States business, the app’s Chinese owner ByteDance has instead decided to try and create a partnership with Oracle that could potentially help it to avoid a ban in the US of the app as well as be able to meet the new tech export regulations of the Chinese government, claimed reports.
Following the threat by the US President Donald Trump last month to shut down TikTok in the country if the app as not sold to an American company. The Beijing-based company had been in negotiations for selling off TikTok's US business to either Oracle or a consortium led by Microsoft.
The US administration is concerned that personal information of millions of American users of the short video sharing app, best known for its anodyne videos of people dancing that go viral among teenagers, could be handed over to Chinese agencies and authorities. 
Late last month, China updated its export control rules that allowed Chinese authorities a say in the transfer of TikTok's algorithm to a foreign buyer which upended the sale process and negotiations. There were reports last week that indicated that it would rather see TikTok being banned in the US rather than it being sold off to an American company in a forced manner. 
According to reports, the new deal being worked out between ByteDance and Oracle, the later will be made the technology partner of ByteDance and will be in-charge of management of TikTok's US user data. Negotiations for a stake in TikTok's US assets for Oracle are also ongoing between the two companies, claimed reports.
Reports also claimed that plans for giving away minority stakes in TikTok's US operations under the proposed deal to some of ByteDance's top backers, including investment firms General Atlantic and Sequoia, are also being made.
Whether this new arrangement would be approved by the Trump administration is still unclear since it wanted an outright sale of the app’s US business to and American tech company. The talks between ByteDance and Oracle are being overseen by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which reviews deals for potential national security risks.
According to reports, citing of China Oceanwide Holdings Group's purchase of US insurer Genworth Financial two years ago would be put forward as an argument by ByteDance for its deal with Oracle, which reportedly followed a  similar arrangement.
Use of a US-based, third-party service provider to manage the data of Genworth's US policy holders, was agreed to by China Oceanwide under that deal. The argument of ByteDance, according to reports, will be that it would be possible to safeguard the data of TikTok's US users with a similar sort of arrangement.,
No comments on the issue were available from ByteDance and Oracle.
Earlier on Sunday, Microsoft had announced that it had been informed by ByteDance that it would not be selling TikTok;s US operations to Microsoft.