You can not select more than 25 topics
Topics must start with a letter or number, can include dashes ('-') and can be up to 35 characters long.
92 lines
3.3 KiB
92 lines
3.3 KiB
4 years ago
|
+++
|
||
|
title = "The Hidden Value of TikTok"
|
||
|
date = 2020-09-15
|
||
|
|
||
|
[taxonomies]
|
||
|
tags = ["thoughts", "tiktok", "oracle", "cloud"]
|
||
|
+++
|
||
|
|
||
|
As if 2020 wasn't weird enough, Oracle bought the US operations of TikTok,
|
||
|
which makes no sense.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Except when it does.
|
||
|
|
||
|
<!-- more -->
|
||
|
|
||
|
## Background 1
|
||
|
|
||
|
For some reason, the USA president thought a popular Chinese application
|
||
|
should not operate on USA soil. So TikTok would be banned from USA internet.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Why? Dunno why, but probably for a trade war.
|
||
|
|
||
|
There was one chance for TikTok to continue working on USA: if it was operated
|
||
|
by an American company.
|
||
|
|
||
|
## Background 2
|
||
|
|
||
|
Oracle is famous for its databases. When someone says "Oracle", the mind of
|
||
|
most developers jump to databases, either by its namesake or MySQL or
|
||
|
SQLite[^1].
|
||
|
|
||
|
So, when the news of Oracle buying the TikTok operations in USA, that confused
|
||
|
a lot of people, to the point of saying that [it would accomplish
|
||
|
nothing](https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/14/21436035/tiktok-oracle-deal-bytedance-president-trump-safety).
|
||
|
|
||
|
But it does. A lot. That's why we need more background.
|
||
|
|
||
|
## Background 3
|
||
|
|
||
|
Oracle is also a player in a larger market called "Cloud Providers". This
|
||
|
market is lead by Amazon with AWS, followed by Microsoft with Azure, then
|
||
|
Google with Google Cloud Platform (GCP) and a mishmash of Huawei with Huawai
|
||
|
Cloud and Oracle with Oracle Cloud.
|
||
|
|
||
|
One of the important things, marketing-wise, is who is using your product. You
|
||
|
get a big player and you can use them as sort of endorsement.
|
||
|
|
||
|
AWS captures a lot of those, but most prominent are the Amazon Store itself
|
||
|
and Netflix; Microsoft have the whole Office365; Google have Spotify. And, up
|
||
|
to a few months, Oracle had nothing (Huawei have the whole Chinese market, so
|
||
|
it is, basically, a player on its own).
|
||
|
|
||
|
## Background 4
|
||
|
|
||
|
A few months ago, Zoom made a surprising announcement of taking [Oracle Cloud
|
||
|
as its provider](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-zoom-video-commn-idUSKCN22A1R9).
|
||
|
People were expecting this announcement saying something like Microsoft or
|
||
|
even Google, but... Oracle? That was a huge surprise but, at the same time, it
|
||
|
gave Oracle the leverage to say "the most used video conferencing software now
|
||
|
runs on Oracle Cloud".
|
||
|
|
||
|
## So, does it make sense?
|
||
|
|
||
|
Sure it does. Not in the technological point, although Oracle could profit
|
||
|
with the knowledge of serving lots of videos over the internet for its own
|
||
|
cloud operations, but it gives them another big name as sort of endorsement of
|
||
|
its cloud service. "TikTok, powered by Oracle Cloud" is one hell of an
|
||
|
advertisement.
|
||
|
|
||
|
And I think *that*'s why it does accomplish a lot.
|
||
|
|
||
|
## The biggest loser
|
||
|
|
||
|
When TikTok operations where on the table, Oracle wasn't the only one to get
|
||
|
it: Microsoft was far away in talks with TikTok to be the USA operator of the
|
||
|
service.
|
||
|
|
||
|
But besides that, Microsoft isn't the biggest loser in this sale of
|
||
|
operations. Google is.
|
||
|
|
||
|
Remember when I mentioned that Google is considered to be in the third place
|
||
|
in the cloud market? Now Oracle have Zoom and TikTok as endorsers and users of
|
||
|
their services. And that could give a huge boost for Oracle Cloud, even if not
|
||
|
by getting more customers or more profit, but the numbers from hosting those
|
||
|
two services may give the impression they surpassed GCP.
|
||
|
|
||
|
It's all a marketing move. And a pretty clever one.
|
||
|
|
||
|
---
|
||
|
|
||
|
[^1]: Yes, MySQL and SQLite are Oracle products.
|