RIP, Cortana? (UPDATED)

When I read earlier this week that some OEMs were adding Amazon Alexa functionality to their new PCs, I really didn't think much of it. Apparently, though, I was very, very wrong about that, as this piece from ZDNet explains:

If Microsoft's Cortana can't win on a Windows PC where can it? At CES 2018, Amazon's Alexa assistant is being added to Acer, Asus and HP systems with more likely to follow.

A year ago, Amazon's Alexa everywhere strategy rolled out. At CES 2018 (see latest via CNET), Alexa's footprint is expanding throughout the smart home and via partnerships.
Cortana's future has increasingly been looking shaky as a front-end assistant. To wit:

• Microsoft has dropped plans to integrate Cortana with its Dynamics 365 ERP and CRM platforms. Microsoft did say that integration with Cortana and Dynamics 365 would happen at a future date without offering details.
• Cortana has 230 skills and that tally is well behind Alexa's 25,000.
• Microsoft and Amazon announced a pact to co-mingle Cortana and Alexa. But Alexa for Business alters the business focus for Microsoft's Cortana.

Microsoft, for their part, have started pushing back against this narrative, as reported by ZDNet:

Microsoft is trying to fight back against perceptions that Cortana may be its next consumer-centric technology to face the chopping block.

On Jan. 9, the company issued a press releasing touting recent wins for Cortana. Among these are the officially unveiled Johnson Controls' Cortana-powered thermostat (which goes on sale for $319 starting in March).

A Microsoft spokesperson I contacted said there are additional new Cortana partners not listed in the Jan. 9 blog post that are going public with their Cortana wares at CES.

"In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort. Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers," the spokesperson said.

Ah, yes... the Internet of Things. Which really isn't a thing yet, because consumers are (so far, anyway) largely uninterested in internet-enabled fridges and toasters, but whatevs. It rather begs the question, though... is a trickle of IoT/Cortana devices enough to keep Cortana alive, when even PC makers are abandoning Cortana in favour of Alexa due to a lack of demand for Microsoft's digital assistant?

The Reg didn't think so:

Torn between wholesaling and retailing Cortana, Microsoft ended up doing a bit of both, and failed badly. It's also torn between what the brand actually means – an Alexa voice assistant, or an IBM Watson-like brand for analytics, covering a multitude of products and technologies.

It's probably unfair to make any kind of pronouncement until 2017's Amazon-Microsoft deal bears fruit. Echo owners will get access to, er, Cortana – or whatever Microsoft decides Cortana is this week.

And that's the trouble.

Less than two months ago this was the Cortana Intelligence Suite, we noted. Only now all mention of the Cortana brand has been removed from everywhere except the URL.

It would be negligent not to point out what a great thing Microsoft has squandered. Cortana is another case of Microsoft failing to make the most of outstanding lab work – it has done speech very well for a very long time – and shrewd acquisitions.

Time will tell, I suppose, but the fact that Microsoft find themselves spending PR time during CES 2018 trying to convince people that Cortana isn't dead, rather than announcing new and actually interesting things themselves, probably isn't a good sign.

Personally, I'm hoping that Cortana's demise actually is imminent, because that actually mean that Windows 10 users will finally get the option back to simply turn Cortana off entirely. Even if Microsoft keep Cortana on life support for another year, it's becoming clear that Microsoft have somehow failed to shove their spyware digital assistant down consumers' collective throats, in spite of having total control over the Windows 10 platform. Perhaps their "sales" approach was a touch too ham-fisted?

UPDATED JAN. 12th:

Paul Thurrott has an interesting take (login required) on Microsoft's push-back:

Google’s presence at the show is particularly impressive: After adding two Assistant-based devices at CES 2017, the firm this year unveiled a stunning array of partners creating Android TVs, Smart TVs, smart speakers, smart displays, smart headphones, automotive solutions, and more all running off of Google Assistant.

By comparison, Microsoft’s partners released exactly one device in 2017, the Harman Kardon Invoke. And we’ve been tantalized by a second device, the JCI Glas thermostat, which will allegedly arrive this year. (To be fair, the device is at CES.) That’s it.

For 2018, Microsoft says it has “partnered with industry leaders including Allwinner, Synaptics, TONLY, and Qualcomm, to develop reference designs for new Cortana experiences.”

Sorry. Reference designs? Guys. This battle is already over. Reference designs should have happened two years ago.

Microsoft told Mary Jo Foley that more is on the way.

“In addition to our currently supported home automation partners, we are announcing new partnerships with Ecobee, Geeni, Honeywell Lyric, IFTTT, LIFX, TP-Link Kasa, and Honeywell Total Connect Comfort,” a Microsoft spokesperson told her. “Cortana currently supports lights, outlets, switches, and thermostats across all providers.”

The delusional nature of this work is astonishing. By comparison, Google Assistant now works with over 225 home control brands and more than 1,500 devices. That’s the bar.

[...]

Brad and I were so stunned by this push for rival Microsoft technologies, that we asked representatives of several PC makers at CES about Cortana. No one uses the technology, we were routinely told. And they are simply delivering the functionality that their customers actually want.

RIP, Cortana (May 2015 - January 2018). Apparently you will not be missed.

Is Microsoft's "Home Hub" doomed before even being released?

I hadn't thought much about Microsoft's "Home Hub" announcement. In a bid to regain ground already lost to Amazons' Echo and Alexa devices, the device is basically a PC peripheral that replicates some of the Big Brother-ish behaviour that Microsoft had removed from the XBox One, constantly listening to everything you say, and pouncing when you say something that it's pre-programmed to respond to.

The idea seems to be that PC users who are already leery of Windows 10's approach to privacy issues will jump at the chance to actually have their PC actively listening to everything they say, while still beaming unspecified data to unspecified locations to be shared with unspecified 3rd parties for non-specific purposes. Have I mentioned latently that Cortana uses a web service to conduct all searches, even if you're only searching for files on your local hard drive?

So, I wasn't particularly impressed by Home Hub... and apparently I wasn't the only one.

From BRG.com:

According to the report, Microsoft thinks Home Hub PCs will be the center of the family, with a special new “family account” that anyone can log into. It’s meant to live on a kitchen counter or somewhere convenient, so everyone will use it as a replacement for a family calendar or to-do notes on the fridge.

It’s a nice idea, but I almost guarantee it will fail for a list of reasons. Specifically:

• Desktop PCs are already dying as everyone moves to laptops. No family wants to spend hundreds of dollars on a Windows PC that’s a replacement for $5 of fridge magnets.
• Microsoft apparently envisages its hardware partners building “Home Hub PCs.” These will probably look like glorified all-in-ones with small screens and cute, colorful plastic cases. They’ll also cost a minimum of $300, which is a hard sell when the cheapest Echo hardware is $30.
• People don’t want a PC sitting in their kitchen. Amazon Echo and Google Home are designed to look like unobtrusive Bluetooth speakers for a reason: having a gigantic touchscreen gadget sitting on your kitchen counter is not good interior design.
• The magic of Alexa and the Google Assistant is the deep integration into your music services and smart home. If people want calendar appointments, they’ll probably ask the assistant on their phone.

All these reasons also assume that Microsoft manages to deliver this product on time, without a bunch of strange bugs, and before the trend for in-home personal assistants has been wiped out by brain implants or something. Let’s just hope that Home Hub is an optional software upgrade, for once.

Ouch. Hard to argue with any of that assessment, though.

Microsoft have spent most of their history as a software company, rather than a hardware company, and their only hardware devices are the XBox line... the latest installment of which is in a distant third place (behind PC and PS4) in the current "console" generation. Now, suddenly, they want to be Apple (Steve Jobs' Apple, that is, not Tim Cook's Apple). I can understand why they'd want to replicate Steve Jobs' feats of consumer electronics dominance, but I'm not at all convinced that they have enough hardware savvy to make it work.