A Quick Leak, As Microsoft Tests the Waters For Cortana On Android

An anonymous reader writes with the news from Venture Beat that a beta of Cortana for Android (long promised) has leaked into the wild via Finnish upload site SuomiMobiili, and from there to others, like APKMirror. From the article: We asked Microsoft where this leak may have come from. "In the spirit of the Windows Insider Program, we're testing the Cortana for Android beta with a limited number of users in the U.S. and China before releasing the beta publicly in the next few weeks," a Microsoft spokesperson told VentureBeat.

Comments

Cortana?

[TechyImmigrant]

It's ok summary writer person. You don't need to put in any effort to explain what Cortana is or why we might care.

Re:Cortana?

[Strudelkugel]

It's possible that phone apps are the punch cards of the future. Most apps require a network connection. What if there is a better way to launch and manage them via Cortana and they run on a cloud system, turning your phone into smart terminal? Then you won't care what OS a phone running as long as it can render the information you want. Maybe Microsoft is now thinking "The Network Is The Computer" as Sun did years ago. The approach might work, it might not, but that would be a reason to get Cortana on as many platforms as possible.

Stop calling these leaks

[BringMyShuttle]

If it really was a leak Microsoft would call the FBI. This is just PR:

Leak n. a synonym for a public relations announcement, dressed to sound more exciting, but which by insulting the target audience's intelligence ends up irritating rather than fooling them

Re:Stop calling these leaks

[DaHat]

I would think there are degrees of leak, some might involve the FBI... others like this case would seem to be a case of "things went public earlier than we wanted but are not going to involve law enforcement"

Of course

[penguinoid]

I want both Google and Microsoft to know every aspect of my life.

Re:Of course

[LessThanObvious]

It's better to have your choice of voice interactive overloads with which to share every aspect of your life.

Re:Of course

[penguinoid]

I installed an addon to erase the evil redirect links google added to their searches (also means I get to results faster). I installed adblock to block some marketing gunk which also has privacy and security implications, besides once again improving my browsing. I installed a blocker for that little thing on websites that tells Facebook where I've been. A few other such things, too.

Re:Yawn

[hackwrench]

Phone OS's aren't speech recognition. That being said, Microsoft has had limited speech recognition for its desktop for quite awhile.
http://www.bing.com/search?q=m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The company's research eventually ultimately led to the development of the Speech API, introduced in 1994

Re:Yawn

[Actually, I do RTFA]

What could Microsoft's shitty "late to the game" voice recognition add over the existing solutions?

MS's V 5.1 voice recognition was shipped with XP (sp2). V8 came with Vista. Both were pretty good, and thye was client based, not cloud based.

Re: Yawn

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Lol. Shut up you fucking nerd cunt. I can smell your cheetohs breath from here.

I would just like to point out that this remark was posted late on a Friday night.