An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: With great fanfare last week, 44 attorneys general hit Google with two antitrust complaints, following a landmark lawsuit the Justice Department and 11 states lodged against the Alphabet Inc. unit in October. What's less known is that Oracle Corp. spent years working behind the scenes to convince regulators and law enforcement agencies in Washington, more than 30 states, the European Union, Australia and at least three other countries to rein in Google's huge search-and-advertising business. Those efforts are paying off. Officials in more than a dozen of the states that sued Google received what has been called Oracle's "black box" presentation showing how Google tracks users' personal information, said Ken Glueck, Oracle's top Washington lobbyist and the architect of the company's antitrust campaign against Google. Glueck outlined for Bloomberg the presentation, which often entails putting an Android phone inside a black briefcase to show how Google collects users' location details -- even when the phones aren't in use -- and confirmed the contours of the pressure campaign. "I couldn't be happier," said Glueck about the barrage of lawsuits. "As far as I can tell, there are more states suing Google than there are states." Oracle has fallen behind the tech giants in the marketplace, yet is notching one legal and regulatory win after another against them, Google especially. In response, Google spokesman Jose Castaneda denounced Oracle's "cloak-and-dagger lobbying campaign," saying "while Oracle describes itself as the biggest data broker on the planet, we're focused on keeping consumers' information safe and secure."

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Oracle said on Friday it's moving its headquarters from the Silicon Valley to Austin, Texas. CNBC reports: "Oracle is implementing a more flexible employee work location policy and has changed its Corporate Headquarters from Redwood City, California to Austin, Texas. We believe these moves best position Oracle for growth and provide our personnel with more flexibility about where and how they work," a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. A bulk of employees can choose their office location, or continue to work from home part time or full time, the company said. "In addition, we will continue to support major hubs for Oracle around the world, including those in the United States such as Redwood City, Austin, Santa Monica, Seattle, Denver, Orlando and Burlington, among others, and we expect to add other locations over time," Oracle said. "By implementing a more modern approach to work, we expect to further improve our employees' quality of life and quality of output." Oracle is one of Silicon Valley's older success stories, founded in Santa Clara in 1977. It moved into its current headquarters in 1989. Several of the buildings on its campus there are constructed in the shape of a squat cylinder, which is the classic symbol in computer systems design for a database, the product on which Oracle built its empire.

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TikTokは、どうやら米国でのサービス停止を免れたようです。土曜日にトランプ大統領は米小売り大手のウォルマートとオラクルがTikTokと…

マイクロソフトは13日（米現地時間）、中国ByteDanceが人気動画サービスTiktokの米国事業買収の提案を拒否したことを発表しました。

Dave Knott quotes the CBC: The owner of TikTok has chosen Oracle over Microsoft as its preferred suitor to buy the popular video-sharing app, according to a source familiar with the deal. Microsoft announced Sunday that its bid to buy TikTok was rejected, removing a leading suitor for the Chinese-owned app a week before President Donald Trump promises to follow through with a plan to ban it in the U.S. The Trump administration has threatened to ban TikTok by mid-September and ordered ByteDance to sell its U.S. business, claiming national-security risks due to its Chinese ownership. The U.S. government worries about user data being funnelled to Chinese authorities.

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中国政府が人気動画アプリTikTokの米国事業の売却に反対し、売却を強制されるよりは事業閉鎖を望んでいるとの噂が報じられています。

A U.S. appeals court rejected Oracle's challenges to the Pentagon's disputed $10 billion cloud-computing contract. From a report: Oracle had raised a number of issues, including allegations of conflicts of interest with Amazon.com, and claims the Pentagon violate its own rules when it set up the contract to be awarded to a single firm. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed a lower court ruling that Oracle wasn't harmed by any errors the Pentagon made in developing the contract proposal because it wouldn't have qualified for the contract anyway. Oracle was fighting its exclusion from seeking the lucrative cloud-computing deal, known as the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, or JEDI. The Pentagon awarded the contract to Microsoft in October over market leader Amazon Web Services. The project, which is valued at as much as $10 billion over a decade, is designed to help the Pentagon consolidate its technology programs and quickly move information to warfighters around the world.

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英フィナンシャル・タイムズ（FT）が17日、オラクルがTikTokの買収候補として参戦するという報じた。TikTokと買収に関する事前協議を行ったと報じた。これを元に複数のメディアが伝えている。すでにTikTokの買収候補として立候補しているMicrosoftと競合することになる。日経新聞によれば、オラクルの広報はこの件にはコメントをしないと回答しているという（Financial Times、日経新聞、CNET）。

Reutersは関係者の話として、オラクルは北米、オーストラリア、ニュージーランド事業の取得を目指しており、TikTokの投資家などと連携して動いていると伝えている。オラクルのラリー・エリソン氏は大手IT企業の中では数少ないトランプ支持者としても知られているが、トランプ大統領はオラクルの買収に関しては肯定的な発言をしているようだ（Reuters、WSJ）。

米トランプ大統領が14日にTikTokの米国事業を90日以内に売却することを求める大統領令を出しており、同時に米国民から取得したデータをすべて削除することを求めている。買収が成立しない場合、TikTokに投稿された米国ユーザーのデータは消えることになると思われる（CNETその2）。

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関連ストーリー：
トランプ大統領、中国のアプリ「TikTok」、「微信」運営企業との取引禁止の大統領令に署名 2020年08月12日
米政府、TikTokに9月15日までの米事業売却か廃業の二択を迫る 2020年08月05日
国内でも中国製アプリ制限の動き。一部議連が政府に提案 2020年07月30日
Twitter、ネット陰謀論「QAnon」を拡散するアカウントを7000以上削除 2020年07月27日
InstagramがTikTokに類似したサービスを8月から米国で展開。すでにインドでもサービス提供 2020年07月23日

President Trump voiced support on Tuesday for Oracle to buy the U.S. operations of TikTok, adding a fresh wrinkle to the bidding for the Chinese-owned video-sharing app. From a report: Oracle is a new entrant in the negotiations for TikTok, whose owner ByteDance is facing a fall deadline from the Trump administration to divest itself of its U.S. operations. Oracle, a giant in business software, has had preliminary discussions about teaming with some of ByteDance's existing minority investors to buy TikTok's U.S. operations but it isn't clear how advanced the talks are, said people familiar with the matter. Microsoft said earlier this month it was in negotiations with ByteDance, and that it was coordinating with the White House. Twitter is also exploring a bid, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. Oracle has closer ties to the White House than most other parties involved in the bidding. Larry Ellison, the company's co-founder, chairman and largest shareholder, earlier this year threw a fundraiser at his house for the president. Chief Executive Safra Catz also worked on the executive committee for the Trump transition team in 2016. Asked Tuesday if Oracle would be a good buyer for TikTok, President Trump said, "Well I think Oracle is a great company and I think its owner is a tremendous guy, a tremendous person. I think that Oracle would be certainly somebody that could handle it."

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phalse phace writes: Oracle has entered the race to acquire TikTok [Editor's note: the link may be paywalled; alternative source], the popular Chinese-owned short video app that President Donald Trump has vowed to shut down unless it is taken over by a US company by mid-November, people briefed about the matter have said. The tech company co-founded by Larry Ellison had held preliminary talks with TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, and was seriously considering purchasing the app's operations in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the people said. Oracle was working with a group of US investors that already own a stake in ByteDance, including General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital, the people added. Microsoft has been the lead contender to buy TikTok since it publicly said in early August that it had held discussions to explore a purchase of the app's US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand businesses. Microsoft has also seriously considered a bid to take over TikTok's global operations beyond the countries it outlined this month, people briefed on the company's thinking have said. The Redmond, Washington-based company is particularly interested in buying TikTok in Europe and India, where the video app has been banned by Narendra Modi, Indian prime minister. ByteDance is opposed to selling any assets beyond those in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, said a person close to the company.

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