While Cortana may still not be available in Dubai, it seems that Microsoft is doing everything in its power to ensure that when it does arrive, we’ll only be able to use Bing as a search tool. In a blog post the company announced that starting today, it will block the ability to perform third-party searches through the Cortana digital assistant, as part of an effort to maintain an “integrated search experience.” In other words, you won’t be able to fine tune Cortana to utilising Google’s search engine for instance.
The reasoning behind the ban of third-party searches is due to users fine tuning the Cortana feature, either by edits to the registry or via browser extensions, that establish Google as the default search engine instead of Bing (which is owned and developed by Microsoft). However users can still use other search engines through browsers.
“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.”
While it is not unprecedented for a company to take such drastic measures to ensure that their own products aren’t used in a way that was not initially conceived, it is still a form of censorship that may not sit well for most users, especially considering that Windows 10 is often seen as more customizable than other OS’. In the end it may not tilt the table in Microsoft’s favour as Google still counts for more than 90% of searches; by contrast, Bing accounts for about 3% of searches.
Source: Microsoft
