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Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy? 107

Posted by samzenpus from the big-move dept.
New submitter Ammalgam writes: Microsoft recently announced that they were porting Cortana over to both Apple and iOS. This move seems to be puzzling to the larger Microsoft community because on it's face, Cortana is not per se a commercial product. But there is an interesting theory emerging. Windows10update.com is speculating that the insertion of Cortana into other platforms is a "Trojan Horse" strategy that will ultimately have Windows, iOS and Android users sending their search requests to Bing. The theory is that enough of those requests will bring Bing to Google's level.
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Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy? More

Is Microsoft Trying to Become "King of Search" With Cortana Strategy?

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  • So? It's a good corporate move. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SQLGuru ( 980662 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:38AM (#49266575) Homepage Journal

    A company tries to get their product to be more popular. Sounds like a good strategy. If it works, bully for them. If it doesn't, they'll try something else. Either people will use it or they won't. Bing isn't a terrible search engine......in fact, there are some features that Google buried related to Image search that Bing still keeps up front. Anyone who just uses Google is actually missing out. I use more than one tool to accomplish my task (Google, Bing, and Yahoo plus a few obscure search engines for specialized searches). Each one offers up results that the other doesn't.

    • Re:So? It's a good corporate move. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr D from 63 ( 3395377 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:55AM (#49266729)

      A company tries to get their product to be more popular. Sounds like a good strategy. .

      Or in other words, of course they are trying to be king of internet search. And its not a 'covert' attempt, nor is Cortana a 'Trojan Horse" as called in the article. Its clearly Microsoft. In fact, I think this is an intentionally "in your face" strategy, not covert.

      But some writers like the idea of secretive strategies, enough to invent them.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        nor is Cortana a 'Trojan Horse" as called in the article. Its [sic] clearly Microsoft.

        A Trojan Horse hides its true purpose, not its creator. "Its clearly Microsoft" does not refute anything.

        • Putting Cortana in iOS isn't a trojan horse (a covert strategy of infiltration using an otherwise harmless overt action to infiltrate). Putting Cortana in iOS is overtly attempting to gain marketshare for Microsoft and Bing.

    • I use more than one tool to accomplish my task (Google, Bing, and Yahoo plus a few obscure search engines for specialized searches)

      Bing is used for one thing, its porn videos.

      • Are its results better than Google's?
        • Try it! Remove the safe search, and you'll be surprised!

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          Yes, very much so. Google doesn't seem to want to include pornographic material in its search results, even if you specifically request it. Bing provides good results, with SafeSearch off. I don't know why it's a thing, and I certainly don't intend on using Bing for anything else, but there you have it.

    • Re:So? It's a good corporate move. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bondsbw ( 888959 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:14AM (#49266885)

      Let's also not forget, good competition is a good thing. That's true even if part of that competition is a company you dislike, because it forces innovation and cost reduction across the market.

    • No, it doesn't sound like a good strategy.

      It sounds like "Spray and pray". In fact, people who don't use google do not exactly jump to searching on Bing, mostly because bing is terrible at being a search engine. Are there alternatives? Yes. Is this a way to bring light to them? Not even remotely.

      Yahoo is bing, so using yahoo is using bing and is just as much garbage as bing.

    • Re:So? It's a good corporate move. (Score:5, Informative)

      by Archangel Michael ( 180766 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:48AM (#49267149) Journal

      . Bing isn't a terrible search engine

      It isn't good either. It is closer to bad than it is good.

      That is, unless you're a mindless idiot searching for useless information. I've done side by side comparisons, and Google returns better and more complete results than Bing. Unless you're searching for coffee, in which case, Bing returns pretty pictures of coffee beans much more often than Google.

      Go ahead, try it on anything more than a simple search. See what you find.

      • Seconded. Bing is pretty awful... at least compared to Google. It's very hard to find what you want in Bing. Their maps, however, are pretty nice, especially the bird's eye view, but Google caught up with that pretty quickly, so that advantage is gone.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by SQLGuru ( 980662 )

        So, a long time ago (1996 or 1997), I had made a statement to a friend that "If it's on the Internet, I can find it." This was back when Lycos and Webcrawler and AltaVista were the best search engines. He challenged me to find out how much a bullet fired from an M-16 dropped at 500 yards (back then, it took me 45 minutes to find). He was ex-Marine, so this was information that he already knew.

        So, I used that same concept to test your theory. My exact query was:
        -- how far will a bullet drop at 500 yards

        T

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jbolden ( 176878 )

          Microsoft has a test engine where you can test both. My mean and mode are of the 5: 3 better for Google, 2 better for Bing

        • how far will an m16 bullet drop at 500 yards

          Best Answer I found ... 500 yds, 62 grain fmj, 47 inches

      • My experiences are slightly different. I use Google out of habit. But looking for a torrent download, Bing seems to be better. So much better that when I can't seem to grab something I want to watch through normal channels (On Demand, Netflix, Hulu Etc.), I go straight to Bing to find the torrent. Maps seem better also. All my own opinion of course!

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Also Google is the king of local. Bing is probably OK in west coast US where they have most integrations, but no-one comes close to understanding local languages (e.g. fixing misspellings, matching alternative spellings, etc.) and serving local content (e.g. business opening hours). That is a HUGE mountain to climb.

      • Bing also likes to return pages of malware infested software instead of the real product you are looking for. I noticed this the first time when I accidentally installed a malware infected version of Chrome because IE put it at the top of the search. I suspect that they will figure people won't want to use Chrome if it comes with all the pop-up ads and crap, but I just attribute it to Microsoft's evil underhanded ways and refuse to use IE or Bing anytime I have a choice.

    • A company tries to get their product to be more popular. Sounds like a good strategy. If it works, bully for them. If it doesn't, they'll try something else. Either people will use it or they won't.

      I could see it potentially working on Android because it could be properly integrated but on iOS there's no way to make it a good user experience. I'm not a big fan of the voice command stuff on my phone on the rare occasion I do use it I just use Siri rather than unlocking my phone, finding the Google app and using their voice search.

    • Searching for "Cortana"

      Bing.com:
      Microsoft's Cortana will join Siri on iOS - CSMonitor.com
      Meet Cortana for Windows Phone | Windows Phone
      Cortana - Halo Nation — The Halo encyclopedia - Halo 1 ...
      Related searches
      Microsoft's Cortana digital assistant may come to iOS
      Microsoft plans to bring Siri competitor Cortana to iOS ...
      Cortana for Windows Phone 8.1 - All you need to know!

      Arbitrarily stopped at 7 so I get at least 2 articles telling me WTF Cortana is when I type it into Bing. Result number 2 and 7 te

  • Cortana (Score:5, Funny)

    by pr0nbot ( 313417 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:39AM (#49266583)

    samzenpus: "Cortana - what is the difference between its and it's?"
    Cortana: "I'd tell you, but let's not pretend you care!"

    • BING (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      BING
      Bing Is Not Google

  • Maybe on Android, but not for long (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DrStrangluv ( 1923412 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:42AM (#49266609)
    Having used all three platforms, I don't see the point of this on iOS. Siri is good enough that I don't think you'll get many people to install Cortana, especially as Siri can be activated without having to start an app. Android on the other hand... OK Google hasn't worked as well for me. It's search dictation is fine, but some of those other things that Siri/Cortana can do aren't handled as well by OK Google. I would tempted to install Cortana on an Android phone. But really, if a lot of people started doing this, I have to believe that Google would just fix their own service. It's gonna be a real uphill battle to get adoption across platforms unless one of the other platforms really drops the ball. Maybe if you are a mutli-platform user, you'd want the same service on each device... say you have a surface, you could put Cortana on your phone, as well. Or if you have a Windows Phone, you and Bill could put Cortana on your tablet. And since Cortana is coming to the desktop experience, MS may be counting on that. They could do some tie-in feature so that it works better that way: set something in Cortana on your desktop/laptop, and your phone and tablet know about it. But I still think that's a tough sell.

    • It's a dice throw, as with all Google services, whether they fix it or just outright kill it.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Junta ( 36770 )

        This would be different as it's a somewhat neglected service for the sake of vague parity with Apple.. If Siri or Cortana started making inroads on *Android* devices, Google would take it pretty seriously and would rapidly relegate third-party solutions to obscurity in short order. This isn't like Wave or Reader or Google code, some exploration of a different market to determine viability, this is directly related to their core business of search.

      • Re:Maybe on Android, but not for long (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Neil Boekend ( 1854906 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:05AM (#49266811)

        In this case I'd bet on fixing it. They probably don't want the search commands being send through MS servers. That treasure trove of add target data is too rich and it is how they got big.

    • My phone (Motorola Droid Turbo) has a voice-activated assistant that I can enable to help launch apps, perform searches, read/reply to texts, etc. It requires an activation phrase to work (which you can customize). Unfortunately, it recognizes too much speech as the activation phrase. I set it to "Droid Activate" and it would activate with "She has a record." It got so annoying hearing the "I'm ready to take your command" beep coming from my phone during ordinary conversations that I disabled it. I did

      • Google Now has worked well for me after I retrained the voice model. It still gets confused sometimes if there's music in the background, but it does a pretty good job otherwise compared to how bad it was on Jellybean. I think the main issue for Cortana will be duplicating the tight integration that GNow and Siri currently have.

    • Re:Maybe on Android, but not for long (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Wycliffe ( 116160 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:08AM (#49266845) Homepage

      Having used all three platforms, I don't see the point of this on iOS. Siri is good enough that I don't think you'll get many people to install Cortana, especially as Siri can be activated without having to start an app. Android on the other hand... OK Google hasn't worked as well for me. It's search dictation is fine, but some of those other things that Siri/Cortana can do aren't handled as well by OK Google. I would tempted to install Cortana on an Android phone.

      My experience has been the exact opposite. Having gotten use to google voice search on android, I find siri very lacking.
      Now that I own an iphone, I still find myself getting very frustrated with siri not giving me the right answers so I open google
      on my iphone and ask the same question and get a much better response from google.

    • Siri uses Bing in the backend. With this, they will work to become "King of Search" without Cortana's help.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Ignoring the generally mediocre search performance of Bing (OK, but Google definitely is better), what makes MS think that Google and Apple will even let Cortana into their walled gardens?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by edremy ( 36408 )
        Google certainly will- its dominance in search means the FTC might take a rather dim view of them excluding alternates on Android.

        Apple might not, although they allow lots of other MS apps including some that compete directly such as Office365 vs. iWork. My guess is that most iOS users are so embedded in Apple's ecosystem that switching to a less-well integrated app away from Siri will be the choice of just about nobody.

  • It remains to be seen (Score:4, Insightful)

    by plebeian ( 910665 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @09:48AM (#49266669)
    Can Microsoft provide more appropriate search results than Google? I still use the Google search engine solely because it can find what I need. In my personal experience searching for technical computer documentation; Bing displays Technet articles and advertising, where as google results include more third party content sources(applicable blogs...etc) in the first two pages of results. As long as this is the case, I will not convert no matter how friendly the "Digital Assistant" is.

    • Can Microsoft provide more appropriate search results than Google?

      No. Every time I use Bing (every few months), the results are somewhat disappointing in comparison.

  • You want me to go look it up and help make it "trending", don't you.

    Forget it and fuck off.

    • Re:WHAT THE FUCK IS CORTANA ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by hcs_$reboot ( 1536101 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:07AM (#49266839)
      Here.

      Microsoft Cortana is an intelligent personal assistant developed by Microsoft for Windows Phone 8.1,[2] Microsoft Band,[3][4] and Windows 10.[5] It is named after Cortana, an artificial intelligence character in Microsoft's Halo video game series, with Jen Taylor, the character's voice actress, returning to voice the personal assistant's US-specific version.[6] Cortana was demonstrated for the first time at the Microsoft BUILD Developer Conference (April 2–4, 2014) in San Francisco.[1] It has been launched as a key ingredient of Microsoft's planned "makeover" of the future operating systems for Windows Phone and Windows.[2] As of 2015, Cortana is available as a beta to all users of Windows Phone 8.1 in the United States (US English), China (Mandarin Chinese), and the United Kingdom (UK English). Users in certain countries can also choose to opt-in to the alpha for the English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish versions of Cortana as of August 2014.[7] Microsoft expects Cortana to be available globally by early 2015.

      (Wikipedia)
      Feeling better?

      • Thank you. I'm really sick of this petty manipulative technique used by /. and more and more news sites.

        As if it weren't obvious what they're constantly trying to do: create "buzz" and searches and clicks through lack of explanation. I'm sure they think they're so clever.

        You know what, I unsubscribed from the /. RSS feed just now. Fuck them, really.

    • It's in the first sentence of the linked article that you obviously didn't bother to click, you colossal moron.

    • It's their voice operated search thing, like Siri, but also it's not voice operated. It is apparently named after a game character or computer from a Microsoft Xbox only game, in an attempt to get their xbox fans on board as unpaid marketing stooges.

  • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by TWX ( 665546 )

      Microsoft has tried for damned near 7 years to shoehorn Bing into every single product and service it provides, and it doesnt work.

      It's great if you want pictures of naked people. It will even suggest which bits of anatomy to include in your search, or which acts of intercourse may be suggested or found, and who else to look for in such states.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jbolden ( 176878 )

      That's pretty much 3 paragraphs of name calling. If you want to critique Bing, critique Bing.

  • Cortana search strategy? (Score:5, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:00AM (#49266767)
    I didn't know what that was. I had to google it.

  • Duh? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry.wayga@net> on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:03AM (#49266791) Journal

    That was obvious the second Microsoft said they were porting it. They want to expand their base for their services. MSFT no longer has a desktop lockin that they used to years ago and so now they have to compete on quality on platforms they don't have control over. Remember when Apple ported iTunes to Windows? Or switched over to using USB rather than firewire? Those weren't to make Apple users feel any better about themselves - it was to target a group of people that didn't use their services.

  • WIndows, Apple, iOS, Mac and Android... trojan horses everywhere. Only Linux may save us all.

  • Trojan horse?? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kaizendojo ( 956951 ) on Monday March 16, 2015 @10:12AM (#49266869)
    I think it's pretty irresponsible to refer to a legitimate and legal marketing tactic that is in use by Google and Yahoo as "Trojan Horse". Users know when they install a Bing search app that their searches are not going to Google... Not sure whether that comment came from teh reference article or the poster, but it's a little over the top, even for MS haters on ./
  • Google, Apple and Microsoft have the luxury of putting their own voice search directly into the UI of their respective operating system. If Microsoft produce a Cortana app then chances are they'll have to make do with wherever they can stick it in iOS / Android and whatever limitations it imposes on how it interacts with the rest of the system. e.g. setting reminders or whatever. I suppose Microsoft could write their own launcher for Android and integrate Cortana but they'd have to make their launcher prett
    • I think some things are exposed through API's, like the low power always on stuff. Microsoft might be able to hook into those, but it's going to be a real challenge to meet the same level of integration, especially as Google has begun opening up GNow to third party developers.
  • It gives me a warm feeling to know that some things about Slashdot never change.

  • Ah, the Cortina (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Not a bad car for its time, but the Hillman Avenger was better in every way and definitely the choice of the cognescenti.

  • Google hyper accurate. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Article claims that google is hyper accurate (but is not personal enough). The author sounds like his last google search was in 1998. Google is a shit search engine which tries to return as many results as possible, results they weigh based on something that works for them, whatever it is, but not accuracy. Unfortunately other search engines are only trying to catch up by imitating everything google does rather than innovating themselves. Thus the "grandma friendly", "number happy" search engine mess we're

  • With the elimination of the ability to perform exact searches the results by the big boys Google and Bing/Yahoo has frustrating gone back to the early days of the internet. Bing had a chance to take on Google but that ended recently when they went the same route. I can no longer perform a relevant search without bing providing something entire different. This leaves the field wide open for another player.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ribuck ( 943217 )

      With the elimination of the ability to perform exact searches ...

      From any Google search results page, click "Search Tools", "All Results", "Verbatim".

  • Software (or Greeks) that show up with something that appears to be one thing on the outside but carries an unpleasant surprise on the inside = a "Trojan horse"

    A company adding features (including additional platforms), and doing so with advertised, promoted, supported and approved apps that say exactly what they are doing on an $APP_STORE is just a company trying to draw in new customers, and there's nothing nefarious about it.

  • I had no idea what Cortana was, or that it's a thing. Now I know to avoid it.

    thanks! =)

  • Cortana is the best example yet that Microsoft's management is really really dumb. When all else fails pull the only skirt from your games and hope that your client demographic is dumb enought to buy it. Microsoft is a technology company and should be able to come out with compelling technology, instead someone thinks that this is what Steve Jobs would come up with and its just a bit sad.
    There are a huge number of markets where microsoft should have a natural advantage where the returns are enormous, instea

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