Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Microsoft is rethinking its Cortana assistant, announcing that it will shut down the current iOS and Android apps, end Cortana support for the Harman Kardon Invoke smart speaker, and remove the original Cortana functionality from the first-generation Surface Headphones starting in 2021.
These changes are still a few months away, but it marks another big step for Microsoft in pivoting Cortana away from a Google Assistant or Alexa alternative to a more specialized, productivity-focused assistant — changes the company has already started making on the Windows 10 version of Cortana earlier this year. (To that end, Microsoft also put a September 7th date on the already-announced sunsetting of third-party Cortana skills for Windows.)