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Cortana Can Now Replace Google Now On Android Devices 155

Posted by timothy from the heterodox-approach dept.
The Verge reports that Microsoft's Cortana can now be used (at least for beta testers) as a drop-in replacement for the Google Now assistant on Android devices; that means users can select launching Cortana as their default on-board assistant, and launch it by holding down the device's home key. However, notes the article, "The update version still doesn't include 'Hey Cortana' support, largely because of hardware limitations that prevent Cortana from always listening for the command."
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Cortana Can Now Replace Google Now On Android Devices More

Cortana Can Now Replace Google Now On Android Devices

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  • Yay! (Score:5, Informative)

    by binarylarry ( 1338699 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @08:38PM (#50282113)

    Now I can have a voice assistant that works even less than Google now does!

    Microsoft innovating the future by copying the past. (TM)

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Dracos ( 107777 )

      How much you wanna bet Cortana is just a branded front end for Siri? You know, like how Bing used to scrape Google for results?

      • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Funny)

        by jader3rd ( 2222716 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @08:56PM (#50282191)

        You know, like how Bing used to scrape Google for results?

        Bing never scraped Google for results.

        • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)

          by cheater512 ( 783349 ) <nick@nickstallman.net> on Sunday August 09, 2015 @09:14PM (#50282249) Homepage

          http://searchengineland.com/go... [searchengineland.com]

          They got caught red handed.

          • Re:Yay! (Score:5, Informative)

            by sexconker ( 1179573 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @10:58PM (#50282531)

            Wrong. They got "caught" doing the same thing every other search engine does with toolbars (or now, what Google does with Chrome). They were simply monitoring what a user clicks on and adding a +1 to that site's weight in their crazy algorithm.
            They weren't copying Google's results, they were copying users's clicks, just like everyone else. If a user clicked on a Google search result, the referrer and the page were fed to Bing, just like with any other user navigation.

            Google ran a smear campaign and clicked on extremely specific results thousands of times from many IPs in their offices n order to poison the result set and show Bing was copying Google. They only had a handful of successes in altering Bing's search results, but the "BING COPIES GOOGLE" campaign was very successful, because people believe it to this day despite the fact that it was debunked several times.

            I hate both companies, but let's at least be correct when talk about them being shitty.

            • Come on mods. There is no -1 "How dare you criticize Google" or -1 "For defending Microsoft" mod. This guy deserves at least a +3 insightful IMHO.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by asylumx ( 881307 )
              Why is this -1? It's clearly not a troll and it's not flamebait -- just informative. I get that Slashdot leans heavily in one direction in the MS vs. anyone debate but come on. This appears to be more like censorship than moderation.

          • Was there something particularly wrong about seeing how others do something to improve your own work?

            • 'Seeing' is Bing devs doing a few Google searches.

              'Copying' is programming IE to report back what results Google is showing, then displaying the exact same results.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by rtb61 ( 674572 )

                Actually that would be fraud. What M$ is actually doing is pumping up bing hits by an order of magnitude in order to sell it too advertisers. So how many Bing searches are fake, a fraud to pump up Bing market rates, how active is Bing in reality once of the faked searches have been eliminated, what market share does it really have.

          • The idea presented implicates that the Bing search engine servers were sending queries to Google search engine servers and storing the results. But that's not what happened, even in the article you linked to. What happened there is that users who had the Bing toolbar, and opted in to have their behavior tracked, did have an influence on the Bing search engine. Given that's the point of the opt in behavior, that's no surprised. And it had nothing to do with Google. The Bing toolbar was looking for situations

            • The Bing toolbar scraped Google search pages, copying the results verbatim.
              Just because user's browsers did the scraping rather than Bing servers is fairly irrelevant.

              • The Bing toolbar scraped Google search pages, copying the results verbatim. Just because user's browsers did the scraping rather than Bing servers is fairly irrelevant.

                But that's not what's implied by your claim (or sense of righteous anger). I still get the sense that you feel that Bing went out of its way to copy Google search results. When really Bing bar tracked users behavior the same way that Google does. And the user behavior learning had nothing specific to do with Google. It applies to all web pages that the users ever used. If no users of the Bing bar went to www.google.com, the "copying of Google" couldn't have ever occurred.

          • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Informative)

            by teh dave ( 1618221 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @12:32AM (#50282743)

            That is dishonest because it is not the complete story.

            From the same article you linked, is a link to this one [searchengineland.com] which reveals that it barely factors into most search result rankings. Furthermore, whilst Bing gets some information on result rankings from Google, they get that info from any search certain IE users make anywhere on the web, not just Google.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by kqs ( 1038910 )

              "You're copying Google!"

              "No, no, we're copying everyone."

              "Oh, well, that's okay then."

              Seriously, though, the tone about this has generally not been outrage or condemnation. Mostly amusement and derision. After the "Scroogled" campaign, Microsoft cannot really whine about baseless accusations for a while...

          • Thank you for that link, that was interesting, as was the companion article. (I had not heard of this before so it was a fascinating read)

            http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279

            Interestingly enough, MS doesn't deny that it uses Googles 'signal' sometimes and even Google puts it at around 9% tops, and it took nearly two weeks for similar results to resembling Googles honeypot to show up on Bing. If it was as nefarious as Google tried to make it I would think it would hap

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

              The fact remains that an audience for Bing would not even exist had it not been made the default search engine on Windows - and had not millions of Windows users not been savvy enough to change it. Even today, many Windows users get to google by typing www.google.com into IE - since they're too intimidated to even try to change the default. That Bing relied on Google rankings on top of this just underscores that, while there may be some need for competition in search, Microsoft has done little to earn it

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by gnupun ( 752725 )

            To be clear, before the test began, these queries found either nothing or a few poor quality results on Google or Bing. Then Google made a manual change, so that a specific page would appear at the top of these searches, even though the site had nothing to do with the search. Two weeks after that, some of these pages began to appear on Bing for these searches.

            It strongly suggests that Bing was copying Google's results, by watching what some people do at Google via Internet Explorer.

            Wait a sec... does this mean IE spies on your google page and sends your google search queries to Microsoft servers?

            http://searchengineland.com/go... [searchengineland.com]

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by KGIII ( 973947 )

              No, it involves the Bing toolbar and specifically opting in to allow usage tracking.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Anonymous Coward

            From the bottom of the article you linked to:

            Postscript: Bing: Why Google’s Wrong In Its Accusations is the follow-up story from talking with Bing. Please be sure to read it in addition to this story.

            Link: http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-accusations-63279

            Basically a Google staffer went rather off on one to game the Bing toolbar (which looks at the sites visited and reports them back to Bing/MS) he stuck a few links into Google and then visited them with an browser with the to

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • And Siri was bought by Apple from an SRI spin-off, which developed the technology as part of a DARPA project. Lots of the components already exist in open source form (as the Sirius project has shown).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 )
      I would much rather have Google Now on my Windows 10 desktop instead of Cortana.

    • Re:Yay! (Score:4, Interesting)

      by vhogemann ( 797994 ) <victor.hogemann@com> on Monday August 10, 2015 @08:25AM (#50283803) Homepage

      You don't know how right you are about this,

      I can't use Cortana even if I wanted to, not even if I owned a Windows Phone device. See, I'm from Brazil, and Cortana doesn't understand Portuguese. It also refuses to work even it I switch my system language to English, because it's only enabled for US and UK. Compare that with Google Now language support.

      It's kind of frightening actually how ahead Google is. That means that Google not only have a greater reach internationally, but means that they can extract information that Microsoft/BING doesn't have access to, since it's not limited to english. All this translates to better services, better local support, better AD targeting, and more dominance online.

    • Now I can have a voice assistant that works even less than Google now does!

      Microsoft innovating the future by copying the past. (TM)

      Supposedly Cortana is much better at speech recognition than either Siri or Ok Google. It's also supposed to be much more capable. I've never used it myself, but it does seem to allow much more complex commands than Siri does.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dwpro ( 520418 )

        I haven't used Cortanta, but MS speech recognition technology that's used for the parsing of voicemail in Exchange seems extremely good. In the last few messages I've gotten I haven't even felt the need to verify that the parsing was correct (that will probably bite me in the ass soon).

  • Hey Google, you evil bastards! (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It sure is nice for you that you can make billions of dollars by exploiting a Linux kernel made for free by volunteers and rebrand it Android, but where's my Bash shell, Google? Why do you have to use Free Software to deny me my Freedom, Google? Hey!! FUCK YOU, Google.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by mcrbids ( 148650 )

      Bash shell is not a tool for the masses. However, at least one app [google.com] that lets you have your shell. In fact, there's more than one. [google.com]

      For me, Linux is the OS, and the "Android" part is somewhat analogous to X11 on "normal" Linux.

      • For me, Linux is the OS, and the "Android" part is somewhat analogous to X11 on "normal" Linux.

        It would seem more closely analogous to KDE or GNOME plus Wayland. But then it's got a VM too...

      • Don't forget Termux (http://termux.com/), which gives you the shell and a whole buncha tools, including gcc, python, ruby and more.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by c ( 8461 )

        This [google.com] was my standard shell/Unix tool environment. At least until I upgraded to L...

    • Re:Hey Google, you... contributor to Linux? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Dutch Gun ( 899105 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @09:18PM (#50282259)

      exploiting a Linux kernel made for free by volunteers

      Corporations like Red Hat, Suse, IBM, Texas Instruments, Linaro, Samsung, Oracle, and yep, even Microsoft, all contributed to Linux. In fact, corporate contributions now stand at about 80% of all submissions [infoworld.com], according to the Linux Development Report. The notion that Linux is made exclusively by a bunch of unpaid volunteers is simply not true. It started out that way, but it has a lot of corporate support these days.

      In case you're wondering, Google was the 8th most prolific Linux kernel corporate contributor in 2014.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It sure is nice for you that you can make billions of dollars by exploiting a Linux kernel made for free by volunteers and rebrand it Android, but where's my Bash shell, Google? Why do you have to use Free Software to deny me my Freedom, Google? Hey!! FUCK YOU, Google.

      I really wish you Free Software folks would stop trying to subsume other projects under your own ideology. Yes it uses the GPLv2 but the Linux kernel was never about Free Software ideals, Linus has made it quite clear that the license choice was purely to ensure "quid-pro-quo" source code contribution and that Tivoization is *good* [lkml.org].

  • I'm okay with this to an extent (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MasseKid ( 1294554 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @09:05PM (#50282215)
    Honestly, I'm kinda happy that third party software can't continuously listen to my microphone.

    • Any app with the mic permission can listen -- it does not need to be signed by the OEM/system/rom. What they can't do is leverage a lower power dedicated processor such at that on the Moto X. But any app can turn on the mic with the correct permission granted.

      http://developer.android.com/r... [android.com]

      • Can they do it also when they are running in background? (honest question: I am not an Android expert, I am just curious).

        • Yep -- I have worked on apps that did exactly that. (Although not for listening in and the data was never saved). Certainly someone could though.

  • a non-american accent you insensitive clod

  • Meanwhile, in Canada (Score:3)

    by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @09:19PM (#50282263) Homepage Journal

    Meanwhile Cortana is not available in Canada because Microsoft would have to provide French support as well as English in order to be legal here.

    • I'm in Canada, been using Cortana on my phone since I got it in December.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msobkow ( 48369 )

        Why, then, is it not available for Windows 10?

        • Why, then, is it not available for Windows 10?

          It's coming over the next few months [windows.com], but it seems that there is more to making a localised version than just understanding the language(s). They are obviously attempting to do more with the product on the desktop than they did on the phones.

          I suppose it's understandable that they delayed it. If they made a crappy version available with plans to improve it later, then people would test it with their new Windows 10 setups, find it to be worthless and never touch it again. That said, I'll be turning it off if

    • Re:Meanwhile, in Canada (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Gumbercules!! ( 1158841 ) on Sunday August 09, 2015 @10:34PM (#50282479)
      No, Cortana is not available in Canada because Microsoft enjoys giving a massive middle finger to anyone who's not an American. Trust me. I have a Windows Phone and a Surface Pro 3. I couldn't be more in the "Microsoft Ecosystem" if I tried. But I'm not an American - I'm an Australian (and English is the language here). Despite Cortana being the selling point for WPh for years, they still don't have support for it in Australia (they recently offered "alpha" support on the phone only and it's missing most features) and you can't get Cortana on Windows 10, either. I routinely get emails from Microsoft about sales or deals in the "Windows Store" that only apply to Americans (so I can't get the discounts or free offers), despite the fact they can clearly see from the information they have on me that I am not an American. It's just one, never ending middle finger from them, and it's the #1 reason I doubt my next phone will be Windows based.

      Maybe someone at Microsoft should look around the WPh sales and realise that the vast majority of Windows Phones in the world are actually not in the USA and start offering support to the people who actually did buy their products??

      Considering Cortana is the #1 selling point - you think they'd put some effort into making it work for the 95.71% of the planet who doesn't live in America.

      • Maybe someone at Microsoft should look around the WPh sales and realise that the vast majority of Windows Phones in the world are actually not in the USA and start offering support to the people who actually did buy their products??

        Maybe the people who live in other countries should look around and realize that the vast majority of Microsoft products shine them on, and start offering their money to the companies that actually offer them products with full functionality??

      • This is because Microsoft want to tailor Cortana to each country's culture. They want her to be more relaxed in Australia and more formal in Japan. This takes time.

        Personally, given Microsoft's position, I would have implemented a generic Cortana earlier and then customised her to each country later, in order to speed up the availability of it. But, that's just me.

        Either way, it's not that Microsoft is giving us Aussies the middle finger, they're just taking their sweet time tweaking her to our country's ta

      • Cortana is not available in Canada because Microsoft enjoys giving a massive middle finger to anyone who's not an American

        Wow, Microsoft is really buying into the whole 'let's copy Apple's business model as closely as we can' thing!

      • Cortana is also disabled on my system because I'm using English language OS in Germany. According to Microsoft, that will not do. There is a notification telling me to switch OS language to German if I want to enable Cortana.

        • You should be happy your device lets you change the language. Many Android devices only have a sparse few local languages on them except outliers like the Xperia. iOS also allows language changes.

      • Windows Phone 2nd largest market is Brazil [wmpoweruser.com],

        And still, no Portuguese support on Cortana until next year. Compare this to the kind of language support you have on Google Now, and how they can mine all kinds of local content because their Bots can understand something other than English.

        I guess Microsoft thinks it can compete with Google by leveraging their services with the Windows Desktop. Take Outlook.com for example, a functional but boring webmail... Want a "better" mail experience? Then buy an Office sub

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by c ( 8461 )

      It would only have to be available in French to be sold in Quebec or used by some governments (who are unlikely to even allow Android on their networks, making the question of Cortana on Android in French entirely irrelevant).

      And even then, I don't believe most online stores enforce the French-for-Quebec restriction.

  • and launch it by holding down the device's home key.

    Whose Android device has a "home key"?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by darkain ( 749283 )

      All of them? Either physical hardware button, softkey, or software UI (like on the Nexus devices). Long-press the home button to activate search when you dont want to do it by voice.

      • Long-press the home button

        Is the home button the little triangle, circle or square?

        http://files.tested.com/photos... [tested.com]

        • Long-press the home button

          Is the home button the little triangle, circle or square?

          http://files.tested.com/photos... [tested.com]

          It's the circle. The mini tutorial that comes up on a clean install points it out and explains it. Even if you skipped the tutorial, 15 seconds of button mashing will reveal it. But you knew which button it was already, you just wanted to be purposely obtuse.

        • Long-press the home button

          Is the home button the little triangle, circle or square?

          http://files.tested.com/photos... [tested.com]

          If you're struggling at this point you should probably just put it down and forget about it.

        • It's the circle. It was a house on Android 2.x, but that was considered too obvious an icon for home, so Google changed it. As far as I can tell, from using Android and from talking to some devs on the Android team at Google, everyone in the Android UI team is a drooling moron who could be replaced by a magpie and produce better results.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Kaenneth ( 82978 )

          You don't know how to use the three seashells?

    • One of my four Android devices has a Home key... my SEMC Xperia Play. It has four physical buttons, which used to be common up until the Gingerbread era, from which it hails.

      I miss the physical buttons. They're so satisfying, and they don't hide from me. But they were a bit pocket-pushy.

      • What's happened to slide out gaming controls? I would feel crippled with an Android device, because there's all that gaming hardware and the ton of software (including emulators and dosbox etc.) that is worthless with only the touch screen.
        I'd rather get a 1989 Game Boy because of that (can take a flash cartridge that you write from a PC). Gargoyle Quest is easily better than a generic slow motion zombie FPS controlled with paint-with-fingers.

        • What's happened to slide out gaming controls?

          They sucked, and nobody wanted to maintain the drivers. Sony basically killed the whole idea by killing their phone which had them. They promised to upgrade the whole Xperia line at the time to ICS, but literally the only device they didn't upgrade was the Xperia Play. The short story is that you can upgrade to ICS through the community, or you can have properly working gamepads and playstation game support. They also never bothered to bring many PS games to the platform, in spite of it being pretty easy fo

  • I would like it if we could use both.

  • I guess Android has the needed hooks to make this happen. That's good. I think that Microsoft would allow Cortana to be replaced as a default on Windows 10 Mobile, if anybody would care enough for it to happen (I doubt it).

    Windows 10? Probably not, but again, if people really wanted it, they'd probably do it, but again, I doubt there'd be a call for it. You can use Google Now via Chrome, and Google has shown little interest in native apps for any platform versus Chrome add ins, and think that's probably all

    • I think that Microsoft would allow Cortana to be replaced as a default on Windows 10 Mobile, if anybody would care enough for it to happen (I doubt it).

      Nothing prevents anyone from implementing something like Cortana on any version of windows which will run on a machine with enough power to do that stuff. That's why PCs are still with us. They're the anything computer. And, of course, why Windows is still with us. Microsoft has played a lot of dirty little tricks over the years, but in general they've made it possible and lately even easy to get your software on their platform.

  • Competition helps EVERYONE! (Score:3)

    by gavron ( 1300111 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @12:37AM (#50282759)

    This is awesome. I'm not a microsoft fan but regardless... having options and choices and being able to evaluate the competition is GREAT.

    Google Now. I love it.
    Cortana. Maybe it will be as good. Maybe it will be better. Maybe whatever it does better Google will add. Maybe what it does worse both will subtract. In the end, guess whom that helps - ME and YOU and everyone using Android. Which, of course, is the only mobile platform to use, right?

    E

  • Cortana Can Now Replace Google Now

    This is why title case for headlines is stupid.

    • Congraturations! You Have Won One Xbox One. Please Add A Plus One On Google Plus Now To Collect Your Prize And Email Us Your Email. Sent From My One Plus One.

  • Will Microsoft be suing the Microsoft Cortana division for violating Microsofts' innovation ?

  • My brief review of Cortana (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxguy ( 98493 ) on Monday August 10, 2015 @04:38AM (#50283177) Homepage

    Me: Set a timer for 30 minutes
    Cortana: Let me search the web for you...

    Me: How far is New York City from here?
    Cortana: I can't tell if you can get there by car

    Microsoft has a lot of work to do before they can play with the big boys.


    • Me: How far is New York City from here?
      Cortana: I can't tell if you can get there by car

      Apparently Cortana has ridden the interstates heading into the city before...

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