Microsoft is sugar-coating the news, but in the next upgrade to Windows, due this spring, Cortana as we know it will all but cease to exist.
The digital assistant will no longer be easily accessible in Windows 10, and it will lose the ability to do many of the things it was designed to do, such as control smart devices in your home or play music.
It won''t compete with Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri or Google Assistant — not that it ever really did.
It won''t be built into smart speakers — not that it ever got incorporated into many.Cortana isn''t being killed off outright.
Not yet anyway.
But it may be at the beginning of one of those long deathbed watches that Microsoft is prone to make failed products endure.
Cortana will live on for now, in a much more limited way.
I&ll explain it all, but first let take a look at Cortana checkered history and why Microsoft has decided it time to drastically curtail what it can do.