Cortana awakens: The evolution of Microsoft's smart assistant

It's fun to imagine all the other names Microsoft's voice assistant, Cortana, could have had: "Bill," "Explorer," "Pathfinder." None of these were considered, as far as we know, but Cortana Group Product Manager Marcus Ash did tell me recently, "Early on we thought about some names that are more generic. I won't share any specific names, but think of a typical Microsoft name circa 1998 and you get the idea." The decision to give Microsoft's consumer-facing intelligence platform a name was a strategic decision, one Ash and his team thought necessary to help people connect with the idea of Cortana and understand how they might engage with it. "Giving a name helps orient people to the kind of communications we're going to encourage them to use with Cortana. If it doesn't have this characteristic of human interaction… it's harder for someone to visualize, how am I supposed to interact?" said Deborah Harrison one of the writers on the Cortana team.