Microsoft, Please Open Up Windows 10 to Other Assistants (Premium)

If Microsoft is serious about doing right by its customers, it will open up Windows 10 to rival digital assistants.

And, no, this is not that far-fetched.

Windows 10 already lets you configure your own default web browser: You can replace Microsoft Edge with Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, or any browser of your choice.

Windows 10 also supports configuring default apps for basic functions like email, music and video playback, photo viewing, and even maps. With digital assistant usage on the rise, Microsoft's customers should demand that Windows 10 allow them to configure the assistant of their choice. Yes, most would choose Google Assistant or Amazon Alexa.

And there is a precedent for this change. After all, Android supports this obvious functionality already: Anyone can switch from Google Assistant to the assistant of their choice.

As of today, the world's only popular assistants, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa, are not available on Windows 10. But Amazon is working on an Alexa desktop application, and we know that at least three of the top five PC makers---HP, Lenovo, and Acer---will bundle this application with their PCs in 2018. Why? Because they do what their customers want. And what their customers want is Alexa. Not Cortana.

To be clear, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa aren't just more popular than Cortana. They're better. They support more skills, or actions, and more services and hardware devices. In cases where there is overlap, Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa normally work better than Cortana, too. For example, all three assistants support Philips Hue lights. But only Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa support them fully. Cortana has no understanding of the rooms that users configure in the Hue system; it can only control individual lights.

But here's the problem: The Alexa application for Windows won't work as well---on Windows only---because Microsoft doesn't give Amazon (or other assistant makers) access to the same capabilities it gives to Cortana. This artificial limitation means that Alexa cannot work from the lock screen, or if the PC is asleep (such as when a laptop lid is closed). Cortana can do this because Microsoft is tilting its platform in Cortana's favor, unfairly. That's the old Microsoft. Today's Microsoft should be better than that.

As for Cortana, let's not get emotional over a voice-based front-end. Cortana isn't what's important to Microsoft. The back-end services that power Cortana are what's important. And those services could easily feed into Alexa, Google Assistant, and other assistants. They should do so.

If Cortana can't be competitive---and it can't---then it's time for Microsoft to stop pretending otherwise, and stop limiting its customers, and open up Windows 10 to rival assistants. It's the right thing to do.

 

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