Personal assistants have grown in popularity in recent years thanks to mobile devices. In addition to facilitating the day-to-day life of users by performing simple tasks that we can send them by voice, they are a great source of personal information that is good for both Google and Apple. Microsoft did not want to miss this opportunity and, with the launch of Windows 10, the company released its own assistant: Cortana. However, not everything has turned out as the company expected.
Cortana is present for Windows 10, of course, but also for Android and iOS. With this wizard, Microsoft wants to reach all users and, incidentally, obtain very valuable information about all of them. However, we must admit that the possibilities offered by Microsoft’s assistant are far below those offered by Siri . And light years away from those offered by the Google assistant . So in the end, people have put Halo AI aside until, in the end, Microsoft has had no choice but to cut their losses.
Cortana will stop working on mobile
Starting March 31, 2021, Cortana will stop working on Android and iOS . This is nothing new, as Microsoft already warned users in July 2020. And, unfortunately, it neither surprises users nor will they miss it. The truth is that the market for this assistant is practically nil, and therefore Microsoft has chosen to end it and rethink the evolution of its productivity assistant.
We do not have to worry about the data that we have saved in Cortana from our mobile. If we have written down reminders or made lists, Microsoft will allow us to access all of this from the wizard on the computer. The question is for how long?
The virtual assistant could disappear from Windows 10
At the moment, it seems that Microsoft wants to focus its assistant completely on Windows 10. However, for a long time, this assistant has been gradually losing prominence in the system. In the first versions of Windows 1o, Cortana was part of the search engine . By clicking on the search bar, the wizard opened with recommendations and warnings and, from it, we could do whatever we wanted.
However, Microsoft decided to separate the search engine from the assistant. Right now, the search engine is useful to find everything we want in seconds, but Cortana has been in the background . Even most users have it disabled on their systems.
It is true that Microsoft is working to give the assistant a second life . In the next versions of Windows 10, for example, Cortana will no longer be a panel that is displayed from the taskbar, but will be an independent, resizable window, which we can place wherever we want. But will that be enough for the wizard to be useful?
At the moment there are no clues that Cortana could have the days numbered in Windows 10 . But if users continue to ignore the wizard, and don’t use it, Microsoft will end up killing it in the end. And, hard to say, Windows will be a little better.