Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonathanFly | Hacker News Reader

>I think the main issue is this: >The US views Chinese social media apps as being able to spread criticism (and most likely propaganda) and the US can’t do likewise in China, so they’ll just not let Chinese social media companies operate in the US until that changes.

Then why force them to sell to a US company specifically. Why wasn't Germany or any EU company with strong privacy laws allowed to buy them?

View on HN

>Then why force them to sell to a US company specifically. Why wasn't Germany or any EU company with strong privacy laws allowed to buy them?

There is no one outside the US with both the tech skills and the cash to buy something the size of TikTok. Heck, there are very few in the US (adding the third requirement of no antitrust concerns).

If TikTok were a Canadian, British, French, German, Korean, Japanese, or Taiwanese company, the US government wouldn't have intervened in the first place.

Hmm. I don’t seem to recall them trying? If a German (or EU) company wanted to buy that probably would have went through if it was the best deal.

But naturally they don’t want to offend China so why take the risk when you can try to play both sides as long as possible?

Like what company? No European company would make that acquisition. Europe doesn't even have any tech companies that are remotely as large as American tech.

SAP is on the same scale as Oracle and makes about as much sense.

Why didn’t they bid?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com