Credit: Microsoft/Gizmodo
I’d be sadder if she hadn’t crashed my computer that one time.
Remember Cortana? I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve forgotten about her; she’s that little circle on the lower left of your Windows 10 taskbar. She sits there and judges you, hoping one day you’ll click on her and ask some random question or request a scheduling. Sadly, it seems her hopes will soon be for naught.
According to Gizmodo, Microsoft is planning on discontinuing Cortana support starting in January 2020. This is based on a Microsoft support article that was discovered on Saturday. According to the article, the Cortana app will be discontinued on mobile platforms, and Cortana’s functionality (such as it is) will be rolled into Office 365. Granted, this article was not posted to Microsoft’s US support site, so this could be a regional thing, but considering Cortana’s support these last few years, a mass-end to her service wouldn’t be altogether surprising.
Last January, Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella, flat-out said that Cortana can’t stand up to the likes of Google’s Assistant or Amazon’s Alexa. The head of Cortana’s development, Javier Soltero, also left his position around this time last year. It also probably didn’t help that Microsoft added Alexa support to many of its own products as well as sell Amazon Echoes in their stores, which rather succinctly rendered Cortana redundant.
When Cortana support ends, any reminders or scheduled stuff you set up through Cortana will be relocated to the separate To-Do app. So it goes, I suppose. At least that’ll be one less step you have to deal with when setting up Windows 10.
