Microsoft to remove Cortana from launcher soon

Virtual assistants are popular among the users who are always on the go and love to handle their smart devices in a different way. So far Google’s Assistant and Amazon’s Alexa have grabbed the market and are pretty popular around many of the smart devices. One such attempt was also made by Microsoft who had launched the Cortana about five years back in 2014. Despite the time it has spent in the market, it has not received the attention that it deserved. Moreover, the competition from Google and Amazon was tough as well. But now the software giant has decided to give its ambitions with virtual assistance some rest.

The Android app of Cortana has already been removed from many of the countries and now the company is all set to remove its Android App launcher. Microsoft in a new blog post revealed that they will be reworking on Cortana and will try to give its users enhanced, seamless, personal productivity assistant. The blog added that the company will be now focusing on some of the other tasks like managing calendars, reminders and emails. Other functionalities like controlling the music player and other third party skills, are being removed from the Windows 10 version of the virtual assistant of Microsoft.

The software giant announced that it will be turning off the Cortana services in Microsoft Launcher, Android from April 2020. However, people who still wish to continue using Cortana can do so. They just have download the Cortana application separately.

The virtual assistant was first showed and demonstrated at the Microsoft BUILD Developer conference in April 2014 held in San Francisco. It was a part of the planned make-over of Microsoft and the company had high hopes that it would help to generate some revenue and would also be used for future operating systems. The company had started developing Cortana in 2009 by the Speech products team.

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