TikTok is Back in the US App Stores on Google and Apple
TikTok was back in the US app stores on Thursday after President Donald Trump delayed his planned ban on the Chinese-owned app. After US Attorney General Pam Bondi promised the tech giants that they would not face penalties for distributing or maintaining TikTok, Apple Inc. and Google, a division of Alphabet Inc., were able to restore ByteDance Ltd.’s software to their platforms.
Nearly half of all Americans use the well-known short video app, which went down for a short while last month before a regulation went into force on January 19 requiring its Chinese owner, ByteDance, to either sell it on national security grounds or risk being banned, according to Reuters.
This Thursday, TikTok, the second-most downloaded app in the United States last year, announced that its most recent app was now available for download.
“You now have some of the biggest corporations in the world accepting the word of the Trump Justice Department that this statute won’t be weaponized against them,” explained Georgetown University law professor Anupam Chander. “This could help them stay on the good side of the Trump administration and address the financial hit they’re taking by not hosting TikTok on app stores.”
A number of prospective buyers, including former Los Angeles Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, have shown interest in the rapidly expanding company, which analysts believe could be worth up to $50 billion, as a result of the unrest at TikTok.
TikTok service was quickly restored by a few tech businesses. Trump promised an executive order on his first day in office that would protect them from responsibility in a message he shared on social media the morning after the app shut down. Oracle quickly restored service to TikTok, as did web infrastructure companies Akamai and Amazon Web Services.
