Amazon and Microsoft agree their voice assistants will talk (to each other)
SAN FRANCISCO, CA - APRIL 02: Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella walks in front of the new Cortana logo as he delivers a keynote address during the 2014 Microsoft Build developer conference on April 2, 2014 in San Francisco, California. Satya Nadella delivered the opening keynote to kick off the 2014 Microsoft Build developer conference which runs through April 4. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
And so Microsoft’s Satya Nadella and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos are today announcing a tie-up, which will — at an unspecified point later this year — enable users of the latter’s Alexa voice assistant to ask her to summon Microsoft’s Cortana voice assistant to ask it to do stuff, and vice versa.
And here’s how they sum up the win-win benefits they see for their respective users by letting their voice assistants interoperate:
Alexa customers will be able to access Cortana’s unique features like booking a meeting or accessing work calendars, reminding you to pick up flowers on your way home, or reading your work email – all using just your voice. Similarly, Cortana customers can ask Alexa to control their smart home devices, shop on Amazon.com, interact with many of the more than 20,000 skills built by third-party developers, and much more.
The main thing to note here — aside from how clumsy it’s going to be having one voice assistant summon another — is that Cortana and Alexa play in very different spheres; one being productivity and business user focused, and the other being ecommerce/entertainment and consumer focused.
Which means there’s little strategic reason for Alexa or Cortana to be overly territorial vis-a-vis each other at this point vs — on the flip side — the extra utility they reckon they can reap by agreeing to integrate their products and expanding the relative capabilities of each.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/30/amazon-and-microsoft-agree-their-voice-assistants-will-talk-to-each-other/?utm_medium=TCnewsletter