Nadella says Cortana should run on Google’s platform

Jan 18, 2019 10:26 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella thinks he knows how the company’s very own digital assistant Cortana can become a successful product: convert it to a skill for other assistants.

Speaking at a meeting with journalists earlier this week, Nadella revealed that Microsoft isn’t looking into building its very own device that would be powered by Cortana, but instead wants to explore other options, such as bringing the digital assistant closer to its rivals.

“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,” he was quoted as saying by BI.

Last year, Microsoft and Amazon launched an update for their digital assistant, allowing Cortana and Alexa to invoke each other and use their features.

This is exactly the approach that Microsoft should use going forward, Nadella explains, pointing to Google Assistant as the company’s next target.

“And you should also be able to use [Cortana] on Google Assistant. You should be able to use it on Alexa, just like you use our apps on Android or iOS. So that's at least how we want to go,” he said.

No Microsoft Cortana speaker planned

Nadella explained that it makes no sense right now to invest in a speaker that would compete with products from Google and Amazon when the company can actually turn to a much simpler approach that would come with bigger benefits.

"We are very mindful of the categories we enter where we can do something unique. A good one is speakers. To me the challenge is, exactly what would we be able to do in that category that is going to be unique?," the Microsoft CEO continued.

While Microsoft appears to be fully committed to a collaboration with Google in the digital assistant world, the search giant hasn’t yet said anything about expanding this market using a partnership with its long-term rival.

Meanwhile, Nadella explains that Cortana’s future relies mostly on integration with other products, and he offered Microsoft 365 as an example. This is living proof that the digital assistant is becoming more of an enterprise feature in the Microsoft ecosystem, especially because these products are the ones bringing home the bacon.