Microsoft hasn’t been able to quite establish its name when it comes to a virtual assistant. The company’s voice assistant called Cortana has been lagging behind Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri for the past few years. Notwithstanding, it looks like Microsoft is looking to change the game with a new way to implement Cortana on smart devices.
Speaking to journalists at a media event earlier this week, Satyam Nadella said that Microsoft no longer considers Cortana as competition for Alexa or Google Assistant. “Cortana needs to be that skill for anybody who’s a Microsoft 365 subscriber,” explained Nadella referencing to Microsoft’s new consumer subscription.
“You should be able to use it on Google Assistant, you should be able to use it on Alexa, just like how you use our apps on Android and iOS so that’s at least how we want to think about where it’ll go,” said Nadella.
Microsoft has already partnered up with Amazon to integrate Cortana and Alexa together and at the launch of this partnership, Nadella compared assistants to web browsers saying they need to be interoperable in order to access the same information.
Satyam Nadella has confirmed that rather than seeing Cortana as an assistant he sees it as an app that will work across multiple platforms. Although, Microsoft will have to convince Google that Cortana is a good idea.
Nadella admits that there was a challenge of creating hardware and software that is unique to compete. Instead of competing with Alexa, Microsoft chose to make Cortana “a valuable skill that somebody who is using Alexa can call”. There are still chances of seeing Cortana in hardware like Surface Headphones in the future.
Microsoft moved Cortana from its AI research division to its Experiences and Devices team last year, which suggested Nadellas’s focus on Cortana’s implementation across various platforms.
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