https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200914/09195245303/oracle-doesnt-buy-tiktok-gets-lucrative-hosting-deal-trump-friends-will-pretend-this-means-something.shtml

The TikTok saga, which was insanely stupid to begin with, kicked into overdrive last month when President Trump issued a blatantly unconstitutional executive order that was designed to force ByteDance to sell TikTok to an American company. We had all sorts of questions about this, but effectively ByteDance had until this week to find a buyer. While Microsoft was rumored for a while, late last night Microsoft announced that its proposal had been rejected and the only competitor left standing was... wait for it... Oracle. This led many to conclude that Oracle was buying TikTok. That is not the case. But hold on, we'll get there.

There was one other serious bidder: Walmart. Last night the company claimed it was still interested in buying TikTok, but the White House rejected that plan, because it would have made it totally obvious that the "national security" pretense for demanding the sale was obvious bullshit. Nope, the White House said: it has to be sold to a "tech" company, so that the White House can stand by its totally unsubstantiated by evidence claims that TikTok's dancing teens represented a national security threat.