During an interview on the podcast show Pivot Schooled, when Google Chief Executive Officer, Sundar Pichai was asked whether the company was planning to buy the popular video app. "We are not," he replied. TikTok is in fact paying Google for the cloud services and is banned in India.
TikTok acquisition underway, nothing finalised yet
After US President Donald Trump threatened to ban the Chinese app and ordered ByteDance Ltd. to sell the U.S. part of its business on grounds of privacy and data security of its users. Microsoft and other tech giants are vying to acquire the video app.
However, Google's parent company Alphabet Inc. did consider joining a group bid as a minority investor, but the plan for some reason did not work out. TikTok CEO Kevin Meyer to leave the company.
Speculations over ByteDance being China-owned
ByteDance has rejected claims that it is controlled by the Chinese government, or that user data is at risk.
Meanwhile, TikTok has been considering international expansion plans and planning to move its company headquarters to London. But no final decision on the same has been made or announced yet.
TikTok said earlier that it currently stores user data in the U.S. with a backup data center in Singapore.TikTok also announced plans to build a new site in Dublin where it intends to store European users' data.
While regulators in the US and Europe have initiated a probe into the popular video app on data security, the US and European governments seem to be in no hurry to entirely ban the app out of the country.
