Cortana now restricted to Edge and Bing: It’s the clicks, stupid

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Likely the #1 way for Microsoft to make money off Windows 10. InfoWorld Woody on Windows.
[See the full post at: Cortana now restricted to Edge and Bing: It’s the clicks, stupid]

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@Woody,

In essence, isn’t this type of behavior anti-competitive? Shades of IE and Windows OS being tied together and the resultant US anti-trust law case?

Let alone the complete disregard of their users.

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I believe it’s using a monopoly in one area to gain unfair advantage in another. Although, given Windows’ rapid decline, it may be difficult to show that Windows is a monopoly….

Regardless, it seems that neither the regulators nor Microsoft’s competitors are really interested in pursuing it.

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“The only way we can confidently deliver this personalized, end-to-end search experience is through the integration of Cortana, Microsoft Edge, and Bing — all designed to do more for you.” R.Gavin M$FT

————

“What’s even better is that Microsoft is releasing version of Cortana for Android devices and the iPhone, so no matter what your choice of device you can still sync up your data.

http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/feature/windows/should-i-upgrade-windows-10-advice-win7-win8-chrome-3618139/

———–

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”
― George Orwell, 1984

Hmmmmmm.

JF

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From what this graph says its still not touching Windows 7 a lot, so Cortana hasn’t managed to be a huge Windows 10 magnet anyway.

https://www.gosquared.com/global/windows/10/#launch

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Yep, no matter how you measure it, windows 7 is still about 50% of Windows usage. XP is still very significant, too.

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A bit o’ cognitive dissonance at work, methinks – but I bet Cortana is reasonably successful on both Android and iPhone, simply because people will get tethered to it on the desktop/laptop.

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Woody wrote above,
“…given Windows’ rapid decline, it may be difficult to show that Windows is a monopoly”

Ah-ha — maybe there *is* a method behind their madness, in terms of so-rapidly destroying their brand image and customer goodwill: it’s to quickly dilute their monopoly position and therefore cunningly *save* them from being fined for gazillions by the EU and such.
Or not!

——————
I haven’t used Windows 10 and I don’t really know what Cortana is
(besides the description here, which makes it sound like an increasingly-tied-in cloud-y search kind of thing inside a Windows 10 computer, which kind of makes me feel claustrophobic just thinking about it, but that is also going to be available for other companies’ devices, confusingly),
and I don’t know if the name has been taken from a Latin root word, or a Spanish word, or something (no offense meant, if it is),
but the commercial name of “Cortana” conjures up, in my mind, an image of a late-60s/early-70s, lowish-budget, clunky car model, maybe orangish or avocado-colored, shaped something like a Pinto. 🙂

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This is entirely unimportant, but I meant the lighter-green avocado-flesh color (like a 70’s bathroom suite in “avocado”, which some of my relatives had),
not the darker-green avocado-skin color, which I would find comforting to look at, like being in a forest.
🙂

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Mainly it’s a type of snail?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana_(gastropod)

various meanings
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortana

The “u” spelling, to me, feels more right for the sword.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtana

Maybe it’s mostly a modern, fake-word/focus-group creation, which has been the impression it gives me… ugh.

Sorry about the tangent.

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“Cortana” is actually named after another Micro$oft intellectual property; much like the female-identifying AI of the same name from the “Halo” series of video games, Cortana in Windows 10 is apparently supposed to be Clippy on steroids… or perhaps Skynet.

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Gillespie says: “Cortana is actually
“… or Clippy…or perhaps Skynet.”

Or perhaps Big Brother [Microsoft]’s top spy, or main squeeze, or all the above.

JF

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Thank you for explaining the origin of MS’ Cortana name to me!

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There’s already an open source workaround.

https://gitlab.com/valinet/cortana-search-using-default-browser/tree/master

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Wow. That was fast.

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Ford Cortina perhaps? 🙂
I think I read in Woody’s book about Windows 10 from where comes the name Cortana. I won’t deconspire the meaning here though.

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Besides all the sarcasm and jokes (which I must say they deserve), there is a serious side to all of this. Edge is still under development and Bing has a miserable market share (under 5%). Cortana is a novelty which I understand will be turned off, by default, in the Enterprise version. So Microsoft has walled off three ‘services’ that are pretty much substandard when compared to what the competitors have on offer.

Will Microsoft now see these three ‘services’ as in the bag or will they assign some of their top talent to elevating them to best of class?

Google is overwhelming preferred by users as a search engine, so that may lessen Edge’s market share even more. Microsoft will doubt have to nurse that injury until the Enterprise users are in the majority on W10 (2020?). Is this going to be all Microsoft is going to rely on to show a boost their market share?

PR will be in full swing until we see anything of substance. ‘Service’ is both a noun and a verb, but to date Microsoft only coverts the noun.

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Points very well taken.

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“Service’ is both a noun and a verb…”

Being ‘serviced’ by M$ is definitely not desired.

JF

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> Cortana in Windows 10 is apparently supposed > to be Clippy on steroids… or perhaps Skynet.

Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

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