It’s certainly fair to consider nefarious reasons, but it’s also important to consider less interesting reasons, like Kodak already (historically) dealing heavily with chemical production and Oracle making a bid to pivot and stay relevant. Who else might want to pay the most for TikTok US? From FAANG, only Facebook seems like a fit but Facebook won’t pay “market” rate for TikTok because they already have Reels, Microsoft and AANG don’t seem like fits. Outside of those, it’s some private equity group but they would need to spin up an operation around actually running and developing TikTok, that’s complicated.
> like Kodak already (historically) dealing heavily with chemical production
This baffles me. What's left over? Has that business not been dead for decades, so what relevant asset would they still have? Machinery? Supply chain? Knowledgeable people? Seems like all of it should be long gone.
I suspect that FB would pay a lot for tiktok, as reels is probably too early to have traction. The whole antitrust investigation will a) make it skittish and b) make government regulators unlikely to approve the deal.
Consider that people are pushing FB to divest instagram, something it has invested a ton in post-acquisition! Do you think the DOJ would allow FB to buy another giant social network?
Microsoft has consistently been in the top three companies by market cap — whereas Netflix is basically nowhere to be found — but I guess FAAMG just isn’t as cool!
Netflix pays engineers a lot and presents an interesting technology challenge. But you're right. They're actually a pretty amazing story. Burned 10 billion in the last 5 years and probably at least double that over their life. And they're on their third business model at this point with the first two having, more or less, failed.
Or it could all just be sweetheart deals.