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Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy?
New submitter Ammalgam writes: Microsoft recently announced that they were porting Cortana over to both Apple and iOS. This move seems to be puzzling to the larger Microsoft community because on it's face, Cortana is not per se a commercial product. But there is an interesting theory emerging. Windows10update.com is speculating that the insertion of Cortana into other platforms is a "Trojan Horse" strategy that will ultimately have Windows, iOS and Android users sending their search requests to Bing. The theory is that enough of those requests will bring Bing to Google's level.
A company tries to get their product to be more popular. Sounds like a good strategy. If it works, bully for them. If it doesn't, they'll try something else. Either people will use it or they won't. Bing isn't a terrible search engine......in fact, there are some features that Google buried related to Image search that Bing still keeps up front. Anyone who just uses Google is actually missing out. I use more than one tool to accomplish my task (Google, Bing, and Yahoo plus a few obscure search engines for specialized searches). Each one offers up results that the other doesn't.
samzenpus: "Cortana - what is the difference between its and it's?"
Cortana: "I'd tell you, but let's not pretend you care!"
Having used all three platforms, I don't see the point of this on iOS. Siri is good enough that I don't think you'll get many people to install Cortana, especially as Siri can be activated without having to start an app. Android on the other hand... OK Google hasn't worked as well for me. It's search dictation is fine, but some of those other things that Siri/Cortana can do aren't handled as well by OK Google. I would tempted to install Cortana on an Android phone. But really, if a lot of people started doing this, I have to believe that Google would just fix their own service. It's gonna be a real uphill battle to get adoption across platforms unless one of the other platforms really drops the ball. Maybe if you are a mutli-platform user, you'd want the same service on each device... say you have a surface, you could put Cortana on your phone, as well. Or if you have a Windows Phone, you and Bill could put Cortana on your tablet. And since Cortana is coming to the desktop experience, MS may be counting on that. They could do some tie-in feature so that it works better that way: set something in Cortana on your desktop/laptop, and your phone and tablet know about it. But I still think that's a tough sell.
A company tries to get their product to be more popular. Sounds like a good strategy. .
Or in other words, of course they are trying to be king of internet search. And its not a 'covert' attempt, nor is Cortana a 'Trojan Horse" as called in the article. Its clearly Microsoft. In fact, I think this is an intentionally "in your face" strategy, not covert.
But some writers like the idea of secretive strategies, enough to invent them.
I didn't know what that was. I had to google it.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
Microsoft Cortana is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Microsoft for Windows Phone 8.1,[2] Microsoft Band,[3][4] and Windows 10.[5] It is named after Cortana, an artificial intelligence character in Microsoft's Halo video game series, with Jen Taylor, the character's voice actress, returning to voice the personal assistant's US-specific version.[6] Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference (April 2–4, 2014) in San Francisco.[1] It has been launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of the future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows.[2] As of 2015, Cortana is available as a beta to all users of Windows Phone 8.1 in the United States (US English), China (Mandarin Chinese), and the United Kingdom (UK English). Users in certain countries can also choose to opt-in to the alpha for the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions of Cortana as of August 2014.[7] Microsoft expects Cortana to be available globally by early 2015.
(Wikipedia)
Feeling better?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I think it's pretty irresponsible to refer to a legitimate and legal marketing tactic that is in use by Google and Yahoo as "Trojan Horse". Users know when they install a Bing search app that their searches are not going to Google... Not sure whether that comment came from teh reference article or the poster, but it's a little over the top, even for MS haters on ./
. Bing isn't a terrible search engine
It isn't good either. It is closer to bad than it is good.
That is, unless you're a mindless idiot searching for useless information. I've done side by side comparisons, and Google returns better and more complete results than Bing. Unless you're searching for coffee, in which case, Bing returns pretty pictures of coffee beans much more often than Google.
Go ahead, try it on anything more than a simple search. See what you find.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.