Cortana no longer an Amazon Alexa rival, Satya Nadella hints at big change for digital assistant

Cortana’s future plans will involve assisting other digital assistants like Amazon Alexa, and not compete with them.

Microsoft’s Cortana will now work with other assistants like Amazon Alexa. (Microsoft)

Microsoft's Cortana launched back in 2014 but the digital assistant hasn't made much of an impact as compared to its competitors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella now says that Cortana isn't actually competing with Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, and instead should work together.

Nadella wants consumers to view Cortana as another Microsoft product which can be used on other platforms. Business Insider (via BetaNews) quoted Nadella as saying, "Would it be better off, for example, to make Cortana a valuable skill that someone who is using Alexa can call? Or should we try to compete with Alexa? We, quite frankly, decided that we would do the former. Because Cortana needs to be that skill for anyone who is a Microsoft Office 365 subscriber."

Speaking about future plans for Cortana, Nadella suggests coming with something unique in the smart speaker segment. With no plans of launching a Cortana-powered smart speaker, Microsoft has integrated the digital assistant on other devices. At Build 2018, Microsoft demonstrated an integration between Cortana and Amazon Alexa.

The collaboration allows users to access Alexa via Cortana on Windows 10 PCs, with a future rollout on Android and iOS. This integration will see Alexa carrying out the personal tasks like reminders and to-do lists, while Cortana will take care of the official work.

Nadella's statements do not come as a shock since Cortana's visibility was reducing. Microsoft has removed Cortana from the search bar of the latest Windows 10 preview build. There have been reports also of Windows 10 possibly allowing users to make third-party assistants default.