According To Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, Any US Company That Acquires TikTok Will Face Major Product Development Challenges

According to Chief Executive Officer of Snap, Evan Spiegel, if a company purchases the United States operations of TikTok it will face major challenges. He said that any United States company will find ByteDance-owned TikTok ‘really challenging’ to digest, downplaying the idea that Snap was interested in bidding for the United States operations of the TikTok app. At the Financial Times Weekend Festival, he said that for whoever acquires the TikTok app, it requires them to build the complete core technology from scratch to support TikTok’s service.

Usually, Snap prefers to purchase companies with their engineers, Spiegel added. He added that a company cannot acquire TikTok with its engineers. According to Evan Spiegel, if you purchase a business, it comes with a talented team. Spiegel thinks that the team is usually everything for Snap. TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, has been ordered to sell the United States operations of TikTok by mid-November. The United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order which bans the TikTok app in the United States unless the United States operations of TikTok are acquired by a US company. President Trump alleged that the TikTok app poses a threat to national security as it is owned by a Chinese company.

On the other hand, TikTok has repeatedly said that the company does not share user data with the Chinese government. Snap CEO said that it is not surprising for him that the US government would be uncomfortable having major China-based tech companies operate and collect user data in the US. He added that certainly the Chinese government also does not allow United States companies to do that in China.

It was ‘obvious’ that the TikTok app would attract from United States politicians as well as regulators based on free trade, Spiegel added. Oracle, and Microsoft along with Walmart, are viewed as the leading companies in purchasing the operations of TikTok in Australia, New Zealand, the United States, and Canada. The purchase price of TikTok ranges from $20 billion to $30 billion, according to a report published by CNBC.

However, the TikTok buyer will still face several hurdles. For instance, the company will have to devise a solution for separating the back-end technology of TikTok from ByteDance. Furthermore, Beijing issued new restrictions on tech exports that could require TikTok to seek Chinese approval to sell its algorithm.



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Featured photo: Getty
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