Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant is clearly being phased out – the feature is still available on desktop versions of Windows, but is no longer included in a standard Windows 11 installation, and the mobile app was discontinued back in March.
But according to former Microsoft product manager Sandeep Paruchuri in an interview with the Big Bets newsletter, the future seemed bright for the virtual assistant. Paruchuri details the development of Cortana as a feature for Windows Phone 8.1 from its inception as a passionate small team project.
The Cortana feature was only officially named “Cortana”after the codename was leaked during development – another early proposal was “Alyx”and then-CEO Steve Ballmer attempted to call it “Bingo”as a “parting gift”before hand over the reins to the current CEO Satya Nadella. (Ballmer had “bad taste for the product,” Paruchuri says, which we in the tech business call an “understatement.”) The developers of Cortana were inspired by Siri but wanted their voice assistant to be more proactive, offering suggestions based on context and user data. instead of just responding to direct input. The team also wanted Cortana to be more personal than Siri or Google Now, helped by Cortana’s Halo voice actress, Jen Taylor.
Ultimately, Paruchuri blames the loss of focus and “dissolution”for Cortana’s demise. “Everything that was right in the first release went wrong in the second release,” he said as product managers from across Microsoft tried to get their ideas into Cortana and it was adapted for platforms (like PC and Xbox) where her proactive contextual features made less sense. Ultimately, Microsoft used the “Cortana”branding for such a wide variety of different technologies that “the name didn’t mean anything at all.”
The interview is also interesting as a snapshot of a crucial period for the development of Windows Phone. Microsoft is stuck in migrating its still fresh Windows Phone operating system from Windows CE version 7 to Windows NT version 8. It was an important step, but it took almost two years of development, working on the basics of the operating system, while iOS and Android are still evolved rapidly and added big bright new features year after year. Cortana has also been affected by Microsoft’s ever-changing product strategy, which Sandeep said had “shifted from its original focus on high-end American products to emerging markets”by the time Cortana’s US-only feature was ready for release.