The most interesting thing about this deal outside the obvious political drama in my opinion is that this will change Big Tech landscape overnight. Microsoft has done enterprise so well for so long but has always struggled on 'consumer tech' outside of its Windows OS. Acquiring a social media platform is going to catapault it into the heart of consumer tech. Question is will TikTok be a parallell arm or will it help…
Who created this lie that Microsoft struggled with consumer? Xbox was always consumer and is massive. A huge chunk of the Windows line was always about consumers. The office line straddled both. Hotmail was consumer first.
Even with Windows, which is their most successful consumer product, its success can arguably be attributed to the fact that Microsoft essentially has a 100% market dominance on computers sold under $1,000. Would that product be as successful if it faced competent competition? We really can't say for certain.
Office has historically seen consumer success (however I suspect the rise of G Suite has significantly curtailed that), but that's only because Office has been a necessity if you want to interact with business documents (which are typically .docx and MS Office files).
The common theme here is that, with the exception of Xbox, Microsoft's consumer products only seem to see success when consumers have no other options.