Microsoft to bid Cortana goodbye

Microsoft Corporation has decided to say bye to Cortana – the popular virtual assistant app. It was a move which was long anticipated as Cortana had failed to keep up with Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant.

This news of the discontinuation of the Cortana app was quietly published in the support forum of Microsoft for the app which mentioned that Microsoft will integrate Cortana in the Microsoft 365 productivity apps whilst killing the standalone version of the app. It is also scheduled to be pulled from all the major app stores in the UK, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India as mentioned by Microsoft.

Cortana was first released by Microsoft to the public in the month of December in the year 2015. The app gets its name from a popular game by Microsoft called ‘Halo’. In the gameplay, the gamers were provided with all the essential tactical information and backstory via the then fictional A.I. character which was voiced by Jen Taylor. Later on, she also went on to voice Cortana. In many ways, Cortana was one of the first movers in the voice-enabled virtual assistant market and paved the way for newer and better alternatives to make way into the market.

Cortana’s primary offering was to deliver personalised recommendations and services. Users were able to instruct Cortana to find information, schedule appointments, set notifications or reminders as and when they required. Cortana relied on the Bing search engine and the stored data of a user on a particular device to offer these personalised services and recommendations. With Cortana shutting down it is clear that only the best can survive in this market segment.