Alphabet and Google CEO Sundar Pichai has denied his company is in the race to acquire the Chinese short-video making app TikTok.
On the latest episode of podcast ‘Pivot Schooled Live’, the Recode’s Kara Swisher and New York University Professor Scott Galloway asked Pichai whether the company is interested in acquiring TikTok.
“We are not,” Pichai replied, adding that the ByteDance-owned app does pay for using Google Cloud services.
TikTok which has 100 million users in the US has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over an executive order banning any US transactions with its parent company ByteDance.
President Trump filed an executive order on August 6, prohibiting ByteDance from doing any transaction in the US for 45 days.
Trump issued another executive order on August 14, giving ByteDance an option to divest its TikTok business in the US within 90 days.
TikTok has filed the lawsuit against the first executive order. Saying that it strongly disagrees with the Trump administration’s position that TikTok is a national security threat, the company alleged that the “US administration failed to follow due process”.
On the podcast, Pichai said that TikTok is growing amid the pandemic like several other tech companies out there.
“There are the companies which have emerged very strongly in these times. The big companies are doing very well but I do see a lot of emerging companies,” Pichai said.
He said that today, there are more choices for information than ever before.
“It feels like there’s a lot coming at us and, you know, you’re worried about innovating, you’re worried about making sure you’re on the cutting edge of things, you worry about the next generation,” Pichai added.
