Oracle finally won TikTok’s US data storage business
Two years after the Trump administration engineered a deal for Oracle to take over TikTok's US data storage, ByteDance announced “100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure."
Two years ago, the Trump administration engineered a deal for Oracle to store all of TikTok’s US data, citing fears the Chinese-owned app would help Beijing spy on Americans. Oracle set out to win the TikTok data storage contract, leveraging US-China antagonism and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s personal relationship with Trump to inject new life into its flagging data storage business.
Now, thanks to a new TikTok data privacy scandal, Oracle has finally won TikTok’s business.
TikTok announced June 17 that it had “changed the default storage location of US user data” and “100% of US user traffic is being routed to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.” The announcement coincided with a BuzzFeed investigation that revealed TikTok employees in China controlled and routinely accessed private data from US TikTok users between September 2021 and January 2022.
Read the rest of this story on qz.com. Become a member to get unlimited access to Quartz’s journalism.