The U.S. government has delayed a proposed ban on TikTok that would have forced companies such as Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) to pull the video app from their U.S. app stores.
The TikTok ban has been delayed until September 27 at midnight. The Department of Commerce last Friday ordered the app stores to stop distributing ByteDance Ltd.’s TikTok and another Chinese-owned app, WeChat.
The removals would have prevented new users from downloading the apps and TikTok and WeChat would not have been able to update the software for existing American users. That’s on hold for about seven days.
The delay followed U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision Saturday to approve Oracle Corp.’s (NYSE:ORCL) bid for the U.S. operations of TikTok. Oracle and Walmart (NYSE:WMT) will take TikTok’s U.S. operations and create a new company called "TikTok Global."
The U.S. Treasury said in a statement that "Oracle will be responsible for key technology and security responsibilities to protect all U.S. user data. Approval of the transaction is subject to a closing with Oracle and Walmart and necessary documentation and conditions to be approved by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States."
The potential ban on TikTok has sparked concern across the technology industry. China’s communist government has blocked several major overseas internet services, including Google and Facebook for years.
In contrast, the U.S. has mostly fostered free expression online and kept its digital market open to foreign businesses. The crackdown on TikTok and WeChat by President Trump represented a drastic policy reversal.
