At the time, Microsoft sold that collaboration as an open development that was essential to drive forward the growth of voice assistants. However, it is increasingly looking like Microsoft is adopting Alexa across its services and putting Cortana in the back seat. It seems 2018 will be a make or break for Cortana. Indeed, Microsoft is moving towards needing to decide between going all in with the assistant or simply killing it off. Going all in could mean aggressive integration in Microsoft services, even to the extent of forcing users to use Cortana for some functions.
Goodbye Cortana?
We are also amazed that Cortana is still not widely available outside of the United States. Reaching a global market is essential for any connected cross-platform service. Of course, those things are very unlikely to happen, so it seems inevitable that Cortana will become a smaller service or even disappear entirely.
