Saturday, July 30, 2016

Cortana as a Mandatory Search Tool

Cortana Search
It won't be long now before Microsoft celebrates the Windows 10 Anniversary Update. The event will be marked with a raft of new features and deeper Cortana integration. There are reports that the virtual assistant is set to replace the standard search function altogether in the upcoming software update, and users will no longer be able to disable Cortana after the Anniversary Update.

"With the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, the search box is now Cortana," Microsoft said in a statement. "Customers can expect the same great search experience powered by Bing and Microsoft Edge with the added benefit of Cortana’s personality.

Currently, Windows 10 users can disable Cortana from within the Settings menu, limiting the search bar to scanning files, folders, and apps. With Cortana enabled users also get web searches, notes, reminders, voice commands and so on. Of course this also requires access to more of their personal information and data.

Understandably some users are upset that Microsoft is forcing Cortana on them - on top of removing Google as an option for web searches and also making the Windows 10 Anniversary Update mandatory. That said, if a user really don't want Cortana for some reason, they can still hide the virtual assistant or limit the information it has access to.

According to Microsoft users can opt-out of Cortana’s suite of personalized services, use it to search the web without losing in or hide Cortana and the search box in the taskbar altogether. They can also head to Start> Settings> Privacy> Speech> Inking & Typing and toggle an option called 'Stop getting to know me', which stop it from learning the user's typing inputs.

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