Why did Microsoft buy TikTok?

(Image source: GeekWire) TikTok may sell to Microsoft.
After the rumor caused a sensation on the Internet for many days, finally, on the morning of August 3, Beijing time, Microsoft released a statement on its blog, confirming for the first time that the company and Byte Beat were negotiating to acquire TikTok.
At the same time, Microsoft promised that the acquisition would be completed before September 15.
Zhang Yiming, the founder of Byte Beat, released a letter from all members of the company on the same day, saying that in view of the current environment, the company will try to have a preliminary discussion with a technology company on the cooperation plan, form a plan, and ensure that TikTok can continue to serve American users.
The "one technology company" here is Microsoft.
Given that TikTok's valuation has reached $50 billion, if an acquisition transaction is finally concluded with Microsoft, it will become another major acquisition transaction after Microsoft's acquisition of LinkedIn, a professional social networking site, with $26.2 billion and GitHub, a source code hosting service platform, with $7.5 billion.
At the same time, it will be another time for Microsoft to lay out its Internet business after the search engines Bing and LinkedIn.
The only public statement issued by Microsoft has fermented public opinion for many days.
On July 31 local time, Reuters, Bloomberg and other media reported that Byte Beat was negotiating with Microsoft to decide whether to sell TikTok's business in the United States to Microsoft.
(See the previous article of titanium media: Microsoft CEO will continue to negotiate for TikTok after communicating with Trump, and the scope of the agreement is not limited to American companies.) In response to this potential transaction, the Global Times reported that President Trump of the United States said at first that in addition to banning TikTok, he may also take other measures to solve the problem.
But on that night, Trump's voice changed and he threatened to issue an injunction.
Therefore, due to Trump's words, it was reported that Microsoft had shelved its acquisition plan the next day.
(See the Global Times report for details: there are differences within the White House, and the US "ban on TikTok" has caused great controversy.) The First Financial Times reported that Zhang Yiming may retain a small amount of shares of TikTok US, but was accused of being rejected by the White House.
(See details in the First Financial Report: Microsoft restarted its acquisition of TikTok bytes and jumped to respond to its adherence to the globalization vision.) At about 19:00 on August 2, US Eastern Time, Microsoft released an official statement on its official blog, saying that CEO Nadella and Trump had a discussion on TikTok, and would speed up the negotiation in order to complete the negotiation no later than September 15, or would invite other American investors to participate in the acquisition.
In this statement, Microsoft confirmed for the first time that the company is promoting negotiations to purchase TikTok's US business and plans to acquire TikTok's businesses in Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
If the transaction is successfully completed, Microsoft will own the ownership and operation rights of TikTok in these four countries.
It can be seen from this statement of Microsoft that Zhang Yiming will give up holding any equity of TikTok in these four countries and sell it to Microsoft and other counterparties with full power to ensure the normal operation of TikTok in overseas markets.
At the same time, Microsoft promised to conduct thorough security inspection before acquiring TikTok's US business