The name was the idea of former CEO Steve Ballmer

Dec 21, 2021 14:51 GMT  ·  By

Cortana was at one point a very ambitious project, as it was supposed to represent the rival Apple’s Siri never got to fight with

But the death of Windows Phone and the poor adoption of Cortana on the desktop turned the digital assistant into a second-class citizen in modern Windows. So right now, few people still care about Cortana, especially as Microsoft’s focus seems to have switched to enterprises.

Speaking for Big Bets in a recent interview, Sandeep Paruchuri, one of the engineers who worked on Cortana, revealed some pretty interesting tidbits about the digital assistant and how the development process advanced behind the closed doors.

Paruchuri explained that the former CEO Steve Ballmer that different plans for Cortana, as he wanted to call it “Bingo” and also use the Microsoft brand. In other words, Cortana was supposed to be named Microsoft Bingo, and Ballmer believed this would have made it a very strong rival to Siri.

Microsoft Bingo, a Ballmer idea

However, Cortana was the name that was eventually picked, not only thanks to the received feedback, but also because the current CEO Satya Nadella favored this choice for the digital assistant.

“Luckily, Satya had different ideas, and was a huge supporter of the project because of his belief in the power of AI. Under his leadership, Cortana got to keep her name and was declared ready to ship,” the former Cortana engineer explained.

Cortana is still around these days, but with a mobile platform to support its adoption, it goes without saying it has more or less lost the fight with Google Assistant and Siri. And given Microsoft is so committed to Android in the long term, especially as its phones are running Google’s mobile operating system, there’s little the company can do to bring back Cortana.