Social Media Marketing

Microsoft blocks Google Chrome & other browsers from Cortana

It looks like any browser that competes with Microsoft’s new Edge browser will no longer within the Cortana digital assistant. So the next time you use cortana, any weblink will open in Edge directly, regardless of your default browser choice.

Here is the Microsoft explanation:

“Unfortunately, as Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent the design of Windows 10 and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana. The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable.

The continuity of these types of task completion scenarios is disrupted if Cortana can’t depend on Bing as the search provider and Microsoft Edge as the browser. The only way we can confidently deliver this personalized, end-to-end search experience is through the integration of Cortana, Microsoft Edge and Bing — all designed to do more for you.”

This implies that rival browsers are changing the defaults automatically, which is not true. Most users of Chrome, Firefox etc do so by choice. Before this update, we could set the search provider but apparently this was not meant to be final.

“We have seen some programs circumvent the intended design of Windows 10 and redirect in ways that were never intended. Cortana was built and designed to use Bing and this was not designed to be something that could be swapped in or out. With this change, we are taking appropriate steps to protect the predictably and reliability of the Windows 10 and Cortana experience for our customers.”

Microsoft is right however that other digital assistants like Google Now, Siri etc do not give you an option to use different search engine providers. It looks like the battle of the digital assistants is about to heat up.