Microsoft is reportedly in talks to buy TikTok's US operations

Post by tootie » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

Cshelton wrote: post #106

slipheen wrote: post #64

I think it's a clever play. It would help address the spyware concern by moving it to a US company, and give them a better foothold in Social Networking than Linked-in provides. I'd have a few concerns about if MS can keep it growing- For one, I worry that Microsoft may mismanage it, similar to how they treated Skype. We saw Yahoo buy many reasonable smaller social networks (Flickr, Delicious, Tumblr) and was never a…

Well, Skype the brand was botched, but Skype is basically what powers Microsoft Teams now. Which is widely successful due to it being bundled with Microsoft 365 (also Teams is pretty decent compared to the comp).

Post by actuator » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

Post by chrisjc » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:18 PM UTC

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #213

I always suspected that the US government had Microsoft buy Skype so they could centralize it under US authority and monitor the communications. I have a feeling that TikTok is the same scenario - instead of worrying about TikTok spying on Americans, the US will have Microsoft buy it and they it'll move the servers to the US and use it to spy on the Chinese. Google and Facebook will never get broken up as long as Unc…

Post by aphextron » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

muststopmyths wrote: post #148

hellomyguys wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I guess anything makes sense to a company that paid $26 billion USD for LinkedIn. Is there data to support that this was overvalued? Not personally a big fan of LinkedIn, but it seemed like probably a good long-term buy for Microsoft.

I don't know, tbh. But to my understanding, it was not profitable before the acquisition. It does generate ~5 billion dollars in revenue now, but Microsoft won't tell you how much of that is profit. Even if I charitably apportion 1B profit (which I bet Microsoft would trumpet if that was a thing), that's 20+ years to make the 26B back. My bigger problem with LinkedIn is that it's a cesspool of recruiter spam. Lynda.c…

Post by andresgottlieb » Fri, Jul 31, 2020, 9:23 PM UTC

vogre wrote: post #207

kohtatsu wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly I don't give a flying fuck about a company's market cap, I care about what it offers to me and the world. Markets are a means to an end, not something to fetishize.

Market cap is actually a quite precise estimation of what company offers to the world. Money is just information about usefulness. If you are useful to other people you've got money. If someone is useful to you, you give money.