Cortana was a virtual assistant developed by Microsoft that used the Bing search engine to perform tasks such as setting reminders and answering questions for users.

Cortana was available in English, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, and Japanese language editions, depending on the software platform and region in which it was used.

[15] The development of Cortana started in 2009 in the Microsoft Speech products team with general manager Zig Serafin and Chief Scientist Larry Heck.

Heck and Serafin established the vision, mission, and long-range plan for Microsoft's digital personal assistant and they built a team with the expertise to create the initial prototypes for Cortana.

[25] Conversely, Microsoft announced in late April 2016 that it would block anything other than Bing and Edge from being used to complete Cortana searches, again raising questions of anti-competitive practices by the company.

[29] A writer from Engadget has criticised the Cortana integration in Skype for responding only to very specific keywords, feeling as if she was "chatting with a search engine" due to the impersonal way the bots replied to certain words such as "Hello" causing the Bing Music bot to bring up Adele's song of that name.

[33][34] In December 2016, Microsoft announced[35] the preview of Calendar.help, a service that enabled people to delegate the scheduling of meetings to Cortana.

The premium speaker has a cylindrical design and offers 360-degree sound, the ability to make and receive calls with Skype, and all of the other features currently available with Cortana.

[38] In 2017, Microsoft partnered with Amazon to integrate Echo and Cortana with each other, allowing users of each smart assistant to summon the other via a command.

[40] In January 2019, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that he no longer saw Cortana as a direct competitor against Alexa and Siri.

[44] On January 31, 2021, Microsoft removed the Cortana mobile application in many markets, including the UK, Australia, Germany, Mexico, China, Spain, Canada, and India.

The support article states that Cortana in the “Play my emails” feature of the Microsoft Outlook mobile app would continue to be available.

[50][51] Cortana was able to set reminders, recognize natural voice without the requirement for keyboard input, and answer questions using information from the Bing search engine.

[58] Cortana's "Concert Watch" monitored Bing searches to determine the bands or musicians that interest the user.

[63] Some devices from the United Kingdom by O2 received the Lumia Denim update without the feature, but this was later clarified as a bug and Microsoft has since fixed it.

[64] Cortana integrated with services such as Foursquare to provide restaurant and local attraction recommendations and LIFX to control smart light bulbs.

The main color scheme would include a black or white background and shades of blue for the respective circles.

[78][79][80][81] Cortana was able to forecast results in various other sports such as the NBA, the NFL,[82] the Super Bowl,[83] the ICC Cricket World Cup[84] and various European football leagues.

Cortana was able to solve mathematical equations, convert units of measurement, and determine the exchange rates between currencies including Bitcoin.

[25] Conversely, Microsoft announced in late April 2016 that it would block anything other than Bing and Edge from being used to complete Cortana searches, again raising questions of anti-competitive practices by the company.

Other language versions of Cortana are available in France (French), China (Simplified Chinese), Japan (Japanese), Germany (German), Italy (Italian), Brazil (Portuguese), Mexico, and Spain (Spanish).

The natural language processing capabilities of Cortana were derived from Tellme Networks (bought by Microsoft in 2007) and were coupled with a Semantic search database called Satori.

[110][111] Cortana updates were delivered independently of those to the main Windows Phone OS,[112] allowing Microsoft to provide new features at a faster pace.