Bill Gates weigh in on Microsoft-TikTok deal, calls it a "poison chalice"

Microsoft is currently involved in a shotgun marriage with TikTok, with the company considering taking over the whole venture and heading headfirst into the social media miasma.

Today Wired asked ex-Microsoft CEO and current technical advisor Bill Gates shared his opinion on the deal, and he did not sound terrible enthusiastic, calling it a “poison chalice.”

He said being big in social media was not a “simple game”, specifically mentioning the encryption issue, which many companies have struggled with. The issue refers to giving users end to end encryption for their communication, making the information unavailable even to the government, something the US government has long opposed.

Overall Gates felt a competitor to Facebook and Twitter would be a good thing, and could not quite understand why Donald Trump, who had tussles with both, would want to kill of TikTok with his 45-day deadline.

Recently, US President Donald Trump said that TikTok will be banned in the US if not sold to Microsoft or another acceptable company by September 15.  The purchase of all of TikTok will reportedly cost around $50 billion, which is little more than 3% of Microsoft’s current $1.6 trillion market cap.