Microsoft founder Bill Gates is highly skeptical of the current corporate management’s plan to acquire the U.S. division of Chinese video platform TikTok. The planned deal is said to be a "poisoned chalice", that could at least cause serious damage to the software giant, the decades-old former CEO told U.S. magazine Wired. It is basically not easy to become a real rough in the business with social media.
Trump wants to ban TikTok
The current CEO Satya Nadella recently exchanged views with US President Donald Trump on whether the takeover would prevent the Republican’s threatened ban on TikTok in the USA. The IT company already holds a small stake in Facebook and in 2016 acquired the career network LinkedIn for over 26 billion U.S. dollars. In the consumer space, however, Microsoft has yet to play a major role in social media, something that could change with the TikTok acquisition.
Gates states in the interview that more competition could emerge in this market with the proposed purchase, which would "is probably a good thing". However, it was already "bizarre", that Trump was apparently trying to "single challenger" to the ground. The fact that the US president also held out his hand and demanded that a "substantial part of the purchase price" The fact that the US government has to pay a substantial part of the purchase price is more than strange in a procedure that is already unusual in itself. If Microsoft’s top brass goes ahead with its plans, the company will have to deal with all these oddities.
Bill’s dance moves
The 64-year-old quipped that, given TikTok’s largely entertainment-focused content, its "Criticism on dance moves" Was not allowed to be a gross added value for the management. In addition to Microsoft, Twitter is now interested in the U.S. division of TikTok, which has so far been operated by its Chinese parent ByteDance.
The billionaire also described the ie of cryptography as difficult with social networks and the messenger services that are often linked to them, such as with Facebook. The government must not allow users to be blocked by end-to-end encryption, for example via WhatsApp or, in the future, Facebook Messenger "Lying, cheating or child pornography" hidden, Gates found. He had also discussed the matter with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, whom he liked personally and to whom he owes a debt of gratitude "very good values" attested. However, there were differences of opinion about the restrictions on protected chats.