After Spotify, it looks like Microsoft has given way to another competitive service on their platform by axing their own. Move away Cortana, Amazon in partnership with Microsoft, is bringing Alexa to Windows 10 PCs this year.
First spotted by the folks at Thurott, Amazon is set to launch Alexa on Windows 10 PCs this year. Selected OEM partners like Lenovo, Asus, HP and Acer will launch devices with Alexa pre-installed. With over 25 thousand skills, Amazon’s smart assistant is certainly more capable than Microsoft’s Cortana.
With only a measly 300 skills, Cortana is sorely lacking growth and development. Microsoft has also started cutting Cortana’s features. Recently the music identifying feature was axed and then Office 365 integration was removed. While Microsoft tells us that it was an experimental feature and will return in a polished way, we wonder.
Given Microsoft’s exceptional track record of axing products without warning consumers, we won’t be surprised if Cortana’s next on the list. Zune, Kinect, Band, Groove and Windows Phone were great products, but Microsoft axed them without citing any solid reason or giving an explanation to it’s fans.
Microsoft’s partnership with Amazon on Alexa was already in the works since September 2017. While it didn’t meet the deadline, work is going on in full swing. If rumors are to be believed, Microsoft will eventually replace Cortana with Alexa, just like they did with Groove and Spotify.
