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Steve Ballmer's "parting gift" as Microsoft CEO: Trying to name Cortana "Bingo":
Microsoft's Cortana voice assistant is clearly winding down—the feature is still available in the desktop versions of Windows, but it's no longer included in a default install of Windows 11, and the mobile app was discontinued back in March.
But the future once looked bright for the chipper virtual assistant, according to former Microsoft Product Manager Sandeep Paruchuri [...]
The Cortana feature was only officially called "Cortana" after the codename leaked during development—another early suggestion was "Alyx," and then-CEO Steve Ballmer tried to name it "Bingo" as a "parting gift" before handing the reins to current CEO Satya Nadella. (Ballmer had "poor product taste," says Paruchuri, in what we in the tech biz call "an understatement.") Cortana's developers were inspired by Siri but wanted their voice assistant to be more proactive, making suggestions based on context and user data rather than merely responding to direct input. The team also wanted Cortana to have more of a personality than Siri or Google Now, which was helped along by Cortana's Halo voice actor, Jen Taylor.
Paruchuri ultimately blames a loss of focus and "dilution" for Cortana's decline.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:28AM (6 children)
Just be glad Cortana wasn't christened Avinash or Lakshman.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:47AM (2 children)
To be fair, what nationality is Siri?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @02:10PM (1 child)
> To be fair, what nationality is Siri?
That girls' name is found in Estonia, Finland, and India at least. It's a variant or derivative of Sigrid in Estonia and Finland. Don't know about India,
It was rude of Apple to use an existing name. Though it would be hard to avoid all names in all languages.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Thursday December 23 2021, @03:48PM
An ex-girlfriend of mine had named one of her (too many) cats "Pula". Turned out to be a city in Croatia, a currency in Botswana, and a few other references [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @02:21PM (1 child)
Oh, hey look, a snowflake got triggered and started spewing racist crap!
Don't startle it though, because then it could start flailing wildly...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @07:40AM
I would say the comment was more xenophobic than racist, but that is splitting hairs. Bigotry is not an attractive quality.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @07:28AM
Why? Cortana sounds like a creepy cyborg, Avinash and Lakshman would have made for some amazing names. I guess they are foreign to most english speakers, at least Cortana is like cortex so has more familiar language basis.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:01PM (3 children)
They could have named the new virtual assistant "Bob", but no ...
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:22PM (1 child)
How about Clippy? They already had that name and it even came with some snazzy graphics and animations.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday December 23 2021, @04:21PM
Not only that. From the summary:
That sounds very much like Clippy, doesn't it?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:42PM
When i see the name 'Bob', i always say it like Rowan Atkinson in The Black Adder:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1QywDPkDjg [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:35PM (6 children)
Cortana has too many syllables to be a convenient command prefix. 2 syllables, like bingo or siri, is OK, but one would be better. Just call it "Windows Hey". Hey, print those reports! Hey, check my spelling! Hey, you're fired! Perfectly intuitive for executives and managerial types.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:43PM
Every modern voice assistant platform lets you change the wake word anyway, such as "Computer" or "Hey Slave".
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:52PM (1 child)
Something nice and simple like "Reboot"...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @01:19PM
bobby drop tables is too long?
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @07:55PM
I'd also would like it to be named with two syllables. Something that rolls off the tongue, maybe a concactination of my preffered pronouns Nig/Ger. I think it would be supper easy to say: "Nig-Ger, what is the weather like today?" and of course being mega polite I would thank xem for their service with "Thank you, Nig-Ger".
Some might say the hard R doesn't make it ideal for rolling off the tongue but I disagree. But if you insist we could have a mode that dispenses with the hard R and uses more coliqual Nig-Ga.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @12:19AM
"Yo yo Cortana, squirt me some Bing search results bruh"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @03:16PM
Modded funny, but is actually true. At least among native English speakers, almost everyone with a 3+ syllable name ends up with a one or two syllable nickname. Also true for two syllable names that are a little awkward to say, like "William" or "Corinne."
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday December 23 2021, @12:41PM
"Paruchuri ultimately blames a loss of focus and "dilution" for Cortana's decline."
So it's not just a stupid product for stupid people then? Suuure. More likely the real reason was they couldn't figure out how to get money mining data from users like Apple and Amazon do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @01:25PM (4 children)
Yet M$ only approached making non-shit products during his era. Strange.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jonathan on Thursday December 23 2021, @07:50PM (3 children)
Yes, because Windows 8 was such a great product loved by all.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 24 2021, @04:45AM (2 children)
Office 2003, VC 2008, VC 2010, Windows XP, 7 --- he became CEO in 2000.
That he ended his tenure with a turd doesn't change that what came before it was the peak for their stuff. Compare it to now, where everything is a turd. But I guess street shitters consider that good product taste? Hmm.
(Score: 2) by jonathan on Saturday December 25 2021, @04:45PM (1 child)
Bill Gates while no longer CEO was still Chairman and still guiding Ballmer for a long time.
Isn't it interesting how you list XP and 7 and somehow skip Vista?
Are you also forgetting how he reacted to the iPhone's arrival on the scene?
Are you also forgetting he signed off on purchasing Nokia's phone division to boost the Windows Phone OS and how that ended up a write-off?
I guess when you omit a lot of these points, your arguments might sound nice but let's stay in reality, please.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 29 2021, @04:09AM
Which were really the products that cemented Microsoft's dominance at a critical time. If Apple had had the sense to either allow clones or spin up a 'budget company' to produce low end mac knockoffs at pc competitive rates, the computer market today could have looked dramatically different.
XP was also the cementation of Microsoft's dominance, having successfully shirked the US anti-trust investigation, and only later getting censured by the EU, which lead to the Windows N releases.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday December 23 2021, @01:53PM (8 children)
Why not let the user/owner name their virtual assistant? It's there to help them and make the computer OS using experience better and more productive, right? Microsoft, do you still sell OS's to customers or is all of your business just NSA spying now?
I believe people still want to buy reasonable products and do useful things with them. Products that are well designed and thoughtfully engineered. We don't all want to spend our lives continuously engaging with your intrusive and rude marketing campaigns.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @02:26PM
Because "brand". Cortana was too much of a "me too, please?" product and it needed to be 'different' from the other guys' product.
You can't have folks in a coffeeshop yelling all sorts of different names when the mac fanbois are all yelling "hey siri" to "be different"; how else would everyone know that "hey eleanor" or "hey qhund" or "hey stud" is a MSFT product? Gotta let everyone know that you are running windows, don't we?
It's brand, it's always brand, because there's not a thing in the world that marketeers can't fuck up...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @02:33PM (1 child)
You're new to the current state of 'computing', aren't you? This isn't about you at all...hasn't been like that for years now. It's all about how much can be squeezed _out of you_.
It's actually a sad state of affairs... back in the day, products were built with intrinsic value. You used a thing because it had intrinsic value to you and because it did stuff for you.
These days, companies build decoy products (e.g. GMail, search, cortana) in order to get to what they really want from you: your data. It's not about the actual products anymore, it's about what those decoy products give access to. The decoy products don't even have to be good or have any intrinsic value anymore, they just have to be 'good enough' to lure you into the roach motel.
(Score: 4, Informative) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:42PM
I don't know about you, but *I* certainly don't use my computer because I want to enjoy the OS.
I use my computer because I want the OS to stay the hell out of my way so I can interact with whatever program it is I'm currently using.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @02:40PM
"Hey Trump"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Thursday December 23 2021, @03:29PM (2 children)
That could be fun. I'd name mine "Satan." "Satan! Play 'Away in a Manger.'" "Satan! Find me Christmas recipes." "Goddamn you, Satan! You fucked up my church offering."
Imagine the looks on soccer moms' faces in Starbucks.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Thursday December 23 2021, @08:41PM (1 child)
I suppose this shows my naivety (or maybe that I don't get out much), but people are so rude as to use voice commands in a place like Starbucks? Do they do it in church, too?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:40PM
Well, apparently it's now popular to make phone calls via speakerphone in public, so I can hear *both* sides of your conversation as you're shuffling around the grocery store...so I'm going to go with "yes, people do that."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday December 23 2021, @11:49PM
I renamed my "Mycroft AI" to "Kaylee" (from Firefly).
Mmmmmmm....Kaylee.....
Could have gone with Inara, but Kaylee rolls better off the tongue--:P :| :P :| :P
--shit, i just splooged in my pants :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Informative) by cmdrklarg on Thursday December 23 2021, @04:19PM (2 children)
It would have done better had they made it look like the eponymous sexy blue AI from Halo.
This is the main reason it was not used. It would ping you when you didn't need it, distracting you from what you were doing. I don't want a proactive digital assistant; I want it to not annoy me when I don't need help from it.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 23 2021, @04:47PM (1 child)
But then how would you ever know about these 7 hot tips to date the sexiest singles in your hyper-local area and are totally not clickbait to a malware-laden site, as advertised by this sleazy company that happened to be the highest bidder for your attention but which we'll kick out as soon as a bigger sucker that gives us even a single cent per 1M impressions more than this one, comes along?
Have you no heart, sir/madam?
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Thursday December 23 2021, @05:02PM
I use male pronouns, thanks.
I am not exactly a bleeding heart liberal, but it definitely sheds no drops for ad floggers.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2, Informative) by vali.magni on Friday December 24 2021, @07:26AM
Ballmer's only gift was getting himself out of the company. He would have run them into the ground if he'd stayed on longer. Sending their corporate stooge Elop to destroy Nokia, and then destroying their own chances at the mobile market, completely missing the evolution of the cloud ecosystem both from the consumer and enterprise points of view, trying to squeeze more out of windows when the OS was becoming less relevant every day, are just a few of his "gifts". What he lacked in vision, strategy and execution, he tried to make up for with belligerence and bull-headedness.