[nbs_tar]

Forgetting their access to extremely cheap debt, MSFT has $140bn in cash which they need to use to return as much value to shareholders as possible. They can spend 30% or so of their cash to aggressively enter a fast growing trillion+ dollar market, with a service that has the potential to take a chunk of out FB. And it pushes them in to closer proximity to commerce. From a return to shareholders perspective, I don't really see why MSFT wouldn't at least seriously entertain this. It's not every day a non-US product scares the hell out of US social media giants and then gets dropped in your lap due to a forced sale. Especially when they were willing to pay $25bn+ for LinkedIn.

Then you have AMZN becoming 3rd largest online ad service, and WMT sees another area in which they'll get crushed by Bezos. They get access to the advertising side via Tik Tok, and can rely on MSFT's team's to help them avoid screwing up the product.