Microsoft Cortana – Dead or alive.

Cortana offers more dead than alive.

• With usage at rock bottom and its Cortana leader resigned, Microsoft is clearly distancing itself and its products from the hapless Cortana which now look certain to occupy a plot in the digital assistant graveyard.
• Microsoft held a media event where Satya Nadella extolled the virtue of Cortana, but it is clear from his commentary that there is no logical reason why anyone will ever use it again.
• Microsoft will be moving it away from its position on the Windows 10 taskbar depriving it from the only place on any system where it remains default.
• Microsoft will also allow compatibility with Google Assistant as well as Amazon Alexa.
• The unanswered question is why anyone would ask Google or Alexa to ask Cortana to do anything seeing as both of them can do everything Cortana can do and much more.
• Furthermore, Microsoft has not invested in Cortana since it became resident on the Windows 10 desktop which has meant that its presence is more of an annoyance than anything else.
• Microsoft claims Cortana is deeply integrated with Office 365 but asking Cortana to do anything is Office is more cumbersome and time-consuming than simply clicking with the mouse.
• Furthermore, most of the time Cortana has no idea what the user is talking about rendering it effectively useless.
• Hence, when Cortana is removed from the desktop, I shall not be sad to see it go.
• I don’t think other Windows users will be either.
• However, putting Cortana quietly to sleep opens the door to a much more interesting opportunity around AI licensing.
• All the digital ecosystems and services are still jumping up and down about AI but very few of them actually have any expertise at all.
• Instead, almost everyone is using mathematics and statistics to predict their users’ behaviour.
• RFM ranks Microsoft as the global No. 4 ahead of Apple, Amazon and Facebook which means it does have something to offer its peers.
• Hence, if it stops competing with Amazon in consumer (as it has with Facebook) it opens the door to a co-operation where others may license its AI to power their systems.
• This is a far more interesting opportunity for Microsoft as opposed to limping along at the back of the back with a third-rate digital assistant.
• Facebook represents by far the biggest opportunity in my opinion because its AI remains very poor and the company is in real need of a quick solution.
• This is the route being taken by Baidu in China and I think it will suit Microsoft’s increasingly Enterprise focus very well.
• Cortana can offer more to Microsoft dead than alive.