Microsoft's voice assistant Cortana was removed, could it be related to Harry Shum's resignation?

Recently, Microsoft released an official statement, saying that it will abandon support for Microsoft Cortana on iOS and Android, and the last support time will end on January 31, 2020. In addition, the Cortana application assistant integrated on Microsoft Launcher will also be removed. Microsoft will release a new version of Microsoft Launcher on or before January 31, completely canceling the integration of Cortana.

In the first few years of the development of intelligent voice assistants, Microsoft Cortana, Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple Siri were known as the four giants of intelligent voice assistants. But as time went by, Microsoft Cortana seemed to have fallen behind, and many people speculated whether Cortana would be abandoned by Microsoft. As expected, Cortana eventually became an abandoned child.

The reporter learned that Microsoft Cortana is the world's first personal intelligent assistant released by Microsoft. At 2 pm on July 30, 2014, Microsoft held a press conference for Windows Phone 8.1 Update in China in Beijing, officially releasing the Chinese version of Cortana and naming it "Microsoft Cortana".

Microsoft Cortana will record user behaviors and usage habits, and use cloud computing, search engines and "unstructured data" analysis to read and "learn" text files, emails, pictures, videos and other data in the phone to understand the user's semantics and context, thereby achieving human-computer interaction. In the early days of its release, it mainly served Windows and Windows Phone platforms. Microsoft Cortana can be said to be Microsoft's attempt in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence, but Microsoft hopes that this artificial intelligence assistant can serve more users, so it can now be downloaded through the App Store and Google Play Store.

On August 15, 2018, Amazon and Microsoft jointly announced that they had completed the integration of their respective voice assistants Alexa and Cortana.

Also at the end of 2018, Microsoft transferred Cortana from its AI research team to the experience and device team, and began to rethink the positioning of Cortana; Microsoft said that users will see Cortana appear in more meaningful products. In May 2019, Microsoft separated Cortana from search in the Windows 10 update and made it a separate feature; in July 2019, Microsoft adjusted the Xbox One dashboard design and deleted the Cortana assistant. It is not difficult to see from these Microsoft initiatives that Microsoft is constantly trying to empower Cortana and make it more independent.

However, despite this, the situation of Microsoft Cortana has not improved: since Microsoft stopped its mobile business, almost no one uses Microsoft Cortana on the PC. Although Microsoft once claimed that more than 150 million people used Microsoft Cortana on Windows 10, the reality is that most people only used the text-based search function, and Microsoft Cortana is tied to this function. In addition, in 2018, Windows CEO Terry Myerson left the company, and Cortana Vice President Javier Soltero also left soon after. This has dealt a blow to the development of Microsoft Cortana to a certain extent.

The reporter noticed that at the beginning of this year, China's Android and Apple app stores had already removed Microsoft Cortana. On the evening of November 18, the reporter logged into the two major app platforms and found that Microsoft Cortana was still removed from the shelves.

It is worth noting that just last week, in the early morning of November 14, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella announced that Microsoft's global executive vice president Harry Shum will officially leave the company early next year, and his position will be concurrently assumed by Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott. Harry Shum is the highest-ranking Chinese employee at Microsoft, and is fully responsible for Microsoft's global artificial intelligence strategy and artificial intelligence product business group, including Microsoft Bing, Cortana, XiaoIce and other product departments; at the same time, he is in charge of Microsoft Research, which is responsible for integrating scientific research with Microsoft's product engineering department. In China, Harry Shum has almost become the spokesperson for Microsoft's artificial intelligence business, and has appeared at Microsoft XiaoIce conferences many times.

Therefore, some industry insiders speculate that Microsoft’s decision to finally abandon Cortana may be related to Shen Xiangyang’s resignation.