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Microsoft Winds Down Its Bigger Plans for Cortana With Mobile App Shutdown (techcrunch.com) 40

Posted by msmash from the scaling-back dept.
At Microsoft's Ignite conference this month, the company announced a new vision for its personal productivity assistant, Cortana -- one which aimed to make it more useful in your day-to-day work, including email, but one which also saw Microsoft scaling its ambitions back from Cortana as a true Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant competitor. Now, the other shoe has dropped, as Microsoft says it's planning to shut down its standalone Cortana mobile apps across a number of markets. From a report: The company quietly revealed its plans to wind down support for Cortana on iOS and Android in several regions, with an end-of-life date of January 31st, 2020. After this point, Cortana mobile app will no longer be supported. Microsoft also said it will release an updated version of its Microsoft Launcher, that will have Cortana removed. Microsoft tells us the impacted markets include Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India. While the U.S. isn't in this list today, it would not be surprising to see its support pulled at a later date. The Cortana app for iOS is only ranked No. 254 in the Productivity category on the App Store, and only No. 145 on Google Play, according to current data from Sensor Tower.
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Microsoft Winds Down Its Bigger Plans for Cortana With Mobile App Shutdown More

Microsoft Winds Down Its Bigger Plans for Cortana With Mobile App Shutdown

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  • this is Microsoft experiencing the same thing they leveraged with Internet Exploder so many years ago. People stick with the built-in option far more often than not, that's why pack-ins wind up being so anticompetitive.

    • It should be noted that MS is not asking the FTC or DOJ or whoever to investigate monopoly abuses at Google at Apple. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

      • Re: If you're wondering... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Brett Buck ( 811747 ) on Monday November 18, 2019 @12:57PM (#59426692)

        They also abandon their initiatives so fast that if you commit to it, you get screwed in a few years. So you can never trust them with anything important.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          this. You buy a movie, tv show, book, music, etc. and they kill the store in a few years. You buy a phone and they kill the platform. You buy a microsoft band fitness tracker and they kill the product. You buy a zune and they kill the product.

          Aside from xbox and surface, pretty much everything they've launched has gone away pretty fast in the last 15 years. If they don't have a dominant position, they give up. Want to kill azure? Just make a better number 2 product and microsoft will give up entirely.

      • It should be noted that MS is not asking the FTC or DOJ or whoever to investigate monopoly abuses at Google at Apple. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

        So at least they are more professional than Spotify; who are acting like petulant babies over Apple Music, and the stupid iOS App-Devs (which are certainly not in the majority), who whine about Apple having a "Monopoly" on the Apple App Store.

      • It should be noted that MS is not asking the FTC or DOJ or whoever to investigate monopoly abuses at Google at Apple. They put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

        That is because the real reason for Cortana is going to be use with MS Office not exactly the same as the trendy toy crapple, amazon shit or google home spy toys.

        Eventually secretaries will not even have to type and the illiterate execs of tomorrow will not even need them for that matter.

        Hospitals today are huge on audio reports that can be transcribed with software so that keyboard illiterate radiologist can just dicta-type away and watch the results of their reports as they speak it.

        Just imagine, very s

    • this is Microsoft experiencing the same thing they leveraged with Internet Exploder so many years ago. People stick with the built-in option far more often than not, that's why pack-ins wind up being so anticompetitive.

      But the alternative is you have products that are basically useless as shipped.

      Back to the old days of booting up your new computer/phone/tablet and going "Well, now what?" And then still having to go someplace(s) and start finding and loading in Apps.

      Since with iOS (and macOS and Windows), at least (don't know about Android), you can actually divest your shiny new device of those Apps/Applications that you don't want/need, I don't think that there is a more practical alternative than to ship things with so

  • You don't get developer buy-in when you keep killing everything.
    Microsoft's lack of commitment to anything just is a complete turn-off, they lost me at Plays-for-Sure

    • Re: Sometimes the winning move is not to play.. (Score:5, Informative)

      by reanjr ( 588767 ) on Monday November 18, 2019 @12:29PM (#59426610) Homepage

      Compared to whom, though? Google's support of new products is laughably bad; way worse than MS. And then there's Apple, well known for being OK breaking compatibility every version.

      • ...And then there's Apple, well known for being OK breaking compatibility every version.

        (non-laughable) Citation, please?

        • Just do a search for "apple backwards compatibility" and you'll see most of the highly ranked content not from Apple is problems with backwards compatibility. This is well known. It's one of the reasons business rejected Apple for so long.

          • Just do a search for "apple backwards compatibility" and you'll see most of the highly ranked content not from Apple is problems with backwards compatibility. This is well known. It's one of the reasons business rejected Apple for so long.

            Even if this is true, the alternative is the (former?) Microsoft model of infinite backwards compatibility.

            We all know how that one turned out, eh?

            And IBM and others heavy-hitters are rejecting that "Apple not suitable for business" meme to great success. Here's some examples:

            https://apple.slashdot.org/sto... [slashdot.org]

            https://www.techrepublic.com/a... [techrepublic.com] ...and why tech-pundits have been saying the same thing for quite a long time. But the IT Computer Priesthood sticks their fingers in their ears because who in that "pr

            • That's not true... The IT computer priest hood said we will use what ever you are willing to budget us for but no one was willing to show them the money.

            • Oh, I don't disagree there are downsides to backwards compatibility. The ggp comment just seems to put a lot of blame on MS for not keeping things supported, when they seem to actually be pretty competitive in this area.

      • They probably all have their issues, but Microsoft has been particularly bi-polar for the longest and burned the most bridges.

        They get everyone excited, promote things, tell you this time is different, and next morning wake up and go in a completely different direction.

        Microsoft's biggest issue is delivering things that don't work well enough in the first iteration to exceed what Apple/Google already deliver. People aren't interested in waiting for 3.0 to arrive. The runway today is a lot shorter, you need

        • I always felt what dooms MS products is their need to integrate the MS ecosystem needlessly. For example, their smart phone Kin was a disaster for many reasons one of which was the insistence that it had to switch to Windows CE. MS bought Danger which made the Sidekick phones. The Sidekick OS was Java based. So in 18 months they had to develop a brand new phone with lots of new features based on an OS that the team had never used before into the Kin. To no great surprise, it was a buggy mess that didn

        • Microsoft's biggest issue is delivering things that don't work well enough in the first iteration to exceed what Apple/Google already deliver. People aren't interested in waiting for 3.0 to arrive. The runway today is a lot shorter, you need to get airborne at the first attempt.

          Actually, Microsoft's problem is that they don't play the long game. They introduce something, it doesn't set the world on fire, and then they pull the rug out from under it. If instead, they released a 1.0, then a 2.0, carefully m

  • Seems to me if even a small number of people used these apps, it would be valuable data for MS to collect to improve Cortana on Windows. There must be almost nobody using this for this decision to make sense.

    • Re:User numbers must be abysmal (Score:4, Informative)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday November 18, 2019 @12:32PM (#59426618) Homepage Journal

      Nobody uses Cortana. If they want to talk to a computer they get one for that purpose from Google or Amazon. Outside of some kids who play Halo, and think talking to their Xbox is neato, who the hell wants Microsoft listening in on them? Not necessarily even for privacy reasons either, just because it's worthless.

    • Re:User numbers must be abysmal (Score:5, Interesting)

      by geek ( 5680 ) on Monday November 18, 2019 @12:33PM (#59426622)

      Seems to me if even a small number of people used these apps, it would be valuable data for MS to collect to improve Cortana on Windows. There must be almost nobody using this for this decision to make sense.

      Not just no one using it. People actively avoid it like the plague. It's default in W10, even has a tool bar right next to the start menu and virtually everyone removes it.

      These assistants are awkward, confusing, less than useful in most respects and talking to an inanimate object doesn't feel natural at all. Works fine on TV but in real life most people hate these things.

      • These assistants are awkward, confusing, less than useful in most respects and talking to an inanimate object doesn't feel natural at all. Works fine on TV but in real life most people hate these things.

        I'll give you that sometimes virtual assistants are awkward, confusing and less than useful. In that respect, they are like a human toddler; which is (generously speaking) about where they are in their level of "human interaction" development.

        But, IMHO, you are dead wrong that the majority of people have any issue whatsoever "talking to an inanimate object." Anyone who has read/seen any sci-fi or even tech-related shows has been waiting for "interactive voice assistants" for the past 50 years or so.

        If you h

        • If you have any kind of culture-shock or discomfort about talking to Siri, Google Assistant or (shudder) Alexa, then it is you that is out-of-step with society at large, or live in a seriously isolated third-world locality.

                  You base this on what, exactly? All the guys in your Magic The Gathering circle have been dreaming of it?

          • You base this on what, exactly?

            He is absolutely right, based on the number of people who use Alexa devices. You are out of touch.

            Hey I don't understand it either, but I can plainly see it's true from a large number of non-technical pretty normal friends who all have and use Alexa devices.

          • Re:User numbers must be abysmal (Score:4, Interesting)

            by NoMoreACs ( 6161580 ) on Monday November 18, 2019 @02:20PM (#59427114)

            If you have any kind of culture-shock or discomfort about talking to Siri, Google Assistant or (shudder) Alexa, then it is you that is out-of-step with society at large, or live in a seriously isolated third-world locality.

                    You base this on what, exactly? All the guys in your Magic The Gathering circle have been dreaming of it?

            No.

            Because Star Trek TOS, with the voice-activated, well, anything, debuted 43 years ago. Also, remember HAL 9000? That (in movie form) premiered 40 years ago.

            And we can go (much) farther back than those two off-the-top examples.

            Voice-activation is not new. In fact, my "Big book of Robots and Electronic Brains", published in 1963 (sadly now unavailable new; but used copies can still be had), had a section on "The Learning Machine", which was, at least partly, about "teaching" a computer to recognize natural-language speech input.

            I loved that book growing-up. Looking back, it's fascinating to find out just how far we haven't come in this field of endeavor...

            https://www.amazon.com/Wonder-... [amazon.com]

            In fact, here's an online copy of that book. "The Teaching Machine" section starts at page 36; but the whole book is worth a read:

            https://archive.org/details/Ho... [archive.org]

            • Very few people have been "dreaming" of talking to computers like Star Trek. Most normal people would just be happy of the damn thing works at all.

              • Very few people have been "dreaming" of talking to computers like Star Trek. Most normal people would just be happy of the damn thing works at all.

                So, IOW, you don't have a cogent argument; so you have to fall back on your luddite opinion.

                Does that about cover it?

            • Given that basic understanding of searches in Google and others is abysmal, I expect understanding spoken speech to be worse. Like the voice activation in my car, it works best if you first know how to phrase the request in the correct way. Which is just like Google text search as well.

    • The only user guides for Cortana on the wild wild web is How To Remove Cortana. Absolutely nobody wants to know how to try and do something useful with it.

  • Outside of the server and desktop and cloud spaces, MS has basically surrendered to its competition on virtually everything else. Phones, browsers, etc. And now voice AI. I used to think Paul Thurrott was nuts when he suggested that MS is paving the way for the NT kernel being replaced by a custom Linux kernel. Now, maybe not so crazy after all. Satya Nadella's strategy seems to be "if our stuff doesn't sell at first, use the competition's stuff and slap our name on it". And even in the cloud space, where A

  • Just what all office workers want is to have everyone talking to their computers. I don't think so. This is just another dumb move on Microsoft's part in its desire to never admit that making Windows 8 (and 10 with some UI mods) a phone OS that "works everywhere" was a horrible decision.
  • Seems like everything from Google is just an experiment. You can't expect it to survive. You can't trust in it. You can't invest in it. Oh, it's Microsoft? Nothing to see here. Move along, Citizen...

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