It's hard to imagine an iPhone without Siri, an Android phone without the Google Assistant,
or an Amazon speaker that doesn't annoy you with unnecessary Alexa notifications.
But could you imagine Windows without Cortana?
Actually, yes. And apparently, Microsoft can too, as Cortana support is ending later in 2023.
But seeing as all of Microsoft's competitors are fully committed to their own voice AIs,
why the heck is Microsoft pulling the plug? You could argue that the Cortana project was doomed from the get-go,
as it was originally envisioned as a voice assistant for phones.
But of course, Windows phones struggled mightily in the marketplace,
and on top of that, Cortana was a reflection of Microsoft misunderstanding,
again, how folks wanted to interact with their devices.
We saw the beginnings of this with Windows 8, where Microsoft tried to force an interface
optimized for touchscreens onto traditional desktops and laptops.
Although this was mercifully de-emphasized in Windows 10, this was also the same version of Windows where Cortana made her debut,
as Microsoft was trying to integrate its phone ecosystem more deeply into Windows.
Not only was phone integration not a particularly in-demand feature,
but Cortana was still first and foremost a voice assistant, even in Windows,
an operating system where it just isn't that difficult to accomplish tasks with a keyboard
and mouse. This meant that Cortana didn't offer much that consumers weren't already getting.
Not to mention that she could be annoyingly intrusive, unlike competitors that, to varying degrees, tended to stay out of the way a bit more.
Eventually, Microsoft began to see Amazon's Alexa as a much more successful model
for how to properly deploy a voice assistant, integrate it into smart speakers that can quickly accomplish tasks when you're away from a computer.
But by this time, Microsoft was already behind the curve,
and it wasn't until late 2017 that the company was finally able to get Cortana into a smart speaker.
Exactly one smart speaker. The Harman Kardon Invoke that sold for a whopping $200.
A far cry from devices like the Echo Dot that cost less than 50 bucks.
Okay, regardless of the timing and the botched rollout, was Cortana actually that bad?
When Cortana first came out, she actually got fairly positive reviews,
despite being a little rough around the edges. The problem was she wasn't good enough to be useful in your PC, so the user base was pretty small.
Meanwhile, the assistants with much larger user bases like Siri
were also having a hard time monetizing effectively.
It's no secret that Amazon has lost a great deal of money on Alexa,
because all those play this song and turn off the lights commands,
haven't translated into cash flowing into the corporate coffers,
and Google has faced similar problems with its assistant. Although Microsoft is, of course, trying to continue selling services through little nudges in Windows,
being in the edge browser, hey, did you know about those?
It doesn't make sense for Microsoft to keep pouring resources into a feature that not only doesn't make the money,
but doesn't even seem to affect softer concerns like brand awareness or goodwill with customers.
Definitely not. Unlike Alexa and Siri, which are almost synonymous with Amazon and Apple by now.
And while Microsoft didn't just give up on Cortana as soon as things started looking a bit grim,
the pandemic really stopped any meaningful improvements right in their tracks.
Microsoft was actively trying to improve Cortana when COVID hit,
but closures of some important facilities at the Microsoft campus stifled progress,
such as a very expensive soundproof chamber where they were testing some of Cortana's voice functionality.
Fast forward to the present day and Microsoft has invested heavily in AI,
but in areas that make more sense to them than a voice assistant.
The next big thing for Microsoft looks like Copilot, a project developed by GitHub and Open AI,
which integrates a large language model directly into Office and Windows itself
to accomplish tasks like auto-generating reports, creating graphs, or analyzing trends from existing data.
Copilot is already present in some features of Windows 11 and the edge browser,
and it's fair to say that the next version of Windows as well will also feature AI heavily.
Cortana just won't be a part of it. But if you do miss hearing her dulcet tones, don't despair.
All you have to do is fire up your copy of Halo. Hey, you watched a whole tech-quickie.
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