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Comment by slevin063 | Hacker News Reader

Google does the same thing with Android. Although they don't use a browser, we have no way to change the search tool in "ok google" feature. If some one wants to replace Cortana with some other product and if Windows doesn't allow, that is a problem. Using bing will eventually improve Cortana and Microsoft should be able to do that.

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If you tap on a search result in "ok google" it'll launch in your default browser, not necessarily chrome.

The forced launch into Edge is the only kinda suspect thing here. Of course the voice goes through each companies respective search engines, they kinda have to to work unless there's some standard for voice queries I'm not aware of. But forcing it to launch in Edge is questionable since there's nothing special there.

Google Now actually just changed this so that it always launches in Chrome (like in the last couple of days.) You can launch it in your default browser through the hamburger menu after launching in Chrome. Pretty annoying actually - if anyone knows if it can be changed I'd love to change back. I rely on my search results opening in Firefox so that they get synced with my history and I can pull them up quickly from any device.

EDIT: Here it is on the 'What's New' list from the play store: http://imgur.com/6UGN2Dz they call it 'Open inside the app' but it's a chrome web view.

Yes, it is very unfortunate. This first started happening yesterday (for me), and I was kind of bummed that it didn't open in Firefox like it used to. It is stuff like this that lends credence to the EU's issues with Google. I am not sure why they feel it is worth it to just put stumbling blocks to user choice like this at every possible chance.

Settings -> accounts & privacy -> toggle "open web pages in app"

There's no user-controlled setting for that. Send in-app feedback to complain.

  > Of course the voice goes through each companies respective
  > search engines, they kinda have to to work unless there's
  > some standard for voice queries I'm not aware of.

There is. Convert the voice query to text, then send the resulting text to the user's preferred search engine.

Does not trigger the same (and spoken) response that at least Siri and "Ok Google" do.

And there are plenty of commands that don't result in a normal search at all, such as "ok google, what song is playing?" or "ok google, when is my next flight?"

Of course, but both fall back to a plain old web search when the request can't be processed specially. In those cases, why not fall back to your search engine of choice?

You get better transcriptions and better search results if you give your search backend a probability-weighted list of possible transcriptions and let it combine that with what it thinks you might be trying to search for given the context it has for you.

As an end-user I'd like to choose to use my preferred search engine with a singular voice-to-text query, rather than an array of possible voice-to-text-queries, even if it means losing context...

As another end-user I have the opposite opinion.

Edge already has Cortana-specific browser chrome. (Some restaurant pages, for example, will light up Cortana's halo in the address bar and clicking that will open a Cortana sidebar full of action cards like "Create a Reservation".) It's not surprising that the plans are to continue adding Cortana functionality in Edge, and to work to make that hand-off between "Taskbar Cortana" and "Edge Cortana" as seamless as possible.

Theoretically they could probably leverage extensions to other browsers, but making sure users had those extensions installed and handing off to those extensions would presumably be A) a bunch of additional work for the teams involved, and B) threaten to show a bunch of seams between the application boundaries, hurting the suspension of disbelief that Cortana is an "individual" working in our favor, potentially weakening Cortana in the public's eyes.

So this is ActiveX v2 then? It's not just loading a URL with plain html5 on the other end?

If anything it's most closely akin to the old Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox Sidebar efforts:

http://edmullen.net/mozilla/moz_sidebar.php http://edmullen.net/mozilla/images/moz_shot_05.jpg

It's loading HTML (and maybe XAML, like Firefox allowed XUL) into a sidebar that may interact with the page it's pulled up alongside.

If it doesn't require restaurant pages implement something on their end - no, it's not "ActiveX v2".

On Android 6 you can change the app for Assist and voice input to Cortana for example.

You can even turn it off completely.

In the exact same way, you can change the app you use for searches on Windows to Google Now, even disable Cortana completely.

Actually the latest insider build (14332) removes all options to disable Cortana. Before you had to opt-in with "get to know me", now it's on at first boot and can't be turned off.

It's no longer possible to rid Windows 10 of Cortana without breaking the start menu and search bar: http://superuser.com/questions/949569/can-i-completely-disab...

I recently tried to remove Cortana, because I personally find voice search worse than useless. I don't want my start menu searches being sent to MSFT. SteamOS for gaming can't come soon enough.

Although they don't use a browser

That's debatable.

Android WebView is a system component powered by Chrome - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.and...

Only on Android 4.4 onwards.

http://developer.android.com/guide/webapps/migrating.html

Which leaves out 26.2% of Android users:

http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

You can use a different launcher. Now is just a feature of Google's launcher, right? It doesn't have deep system integration.

On my Android phone, it is AFAICT impossible to remove the Google-branded search bar from the top of every page of the "desktop" (or whatever we call the basic app launcher screen on phones). On my Windows 10 computer, it is trivial to remove Cortana from my taskbar.

I've never heard of a device that wouldn't even let you install a different launcher.

You are aware that your "desktop" is a separate app right? And like your keyboard, you can install replacements. I use this [1] launcher and it lets me turn off that Google search bar.

I don't mean to be condescending, but either you have an incredibly locked down device, more so than I've ever heard of, or you're just understandably unaware of that aspect of Android.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.adwfreak.l...

Thanks for the link! I honestly had no idea that such a thing even existed, and I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to just drag the search bar off the screen like any other widget. Though still sort of a shame that I have to install and trust yet another third-party app just to do such a basic operation (I suppose it's some consolation that Android at least ships with a flashlight app these days).

If you bought a phone that's so locked down, you can't install a different launcher, I am sorry. It's actually really sad how locked down some android devices are, and part of why I do extra research when buying my phones...

Working backwards...

Nexus 6P OnePlus One Nexus 4 Some samsung POC Original G1 (nokia pre-smart phones)

Even the samsung was able to install a 3rd party build of Cyanogenmod (checked before buying it)... every phone since the G1 has been android, and until the Nexus 4 I ran cyanogenmod... the N4, OPO and N6p are all running stock, since they include wifi hotspot in the box.

To be fair... You're speaking the words "OK Google", to the Google app. It wouldn't really make a ton of sense for that to be powered by a different search engine.

I don't believe that's a good analogy unless Cortana is renamed "Bing", because then the user expectation of saying "OK Bing" has a more clear intent about using Bing search engine only.

I don't think most users will know or care.

No, no, Google is infallible. Besides, Microsoft is betraying us after they open sourced several of their most popular libraries and toolkits. They just can't have it both ways. /sarcasm

In both Google and Microsoft's case this could be considered anti-competitive behaviour. Especially for Microsoft, who control the entire PC market.

I don't know that you could make that argument today... if you look at PC sales overall, combined with the amount of developer mindshare in terms of Linux and OSX, and those not upgrading to the latest windows, combined with phones, tablets, etc... it's not what it used to be.

Although I don't necessarily agree with it, I do believe that these decisions are probably less about locking and more about delivering the best user experience possible. I use OSX more these days (rMBP for work, and personal laptops) and Ubuntu/Unity (htpc) more than my Windows 10 pro desktop, and on that I've disabled Cortana. and use Chrome as my main browser.

Although it's good to be skeptical, I don't think there's much conspiracy here.

Maybe I'm wrong but I still take the view that defaulting to your own service is fine, but locking it to your own service is bad. Google and Microsoft are both wrong in this case, and you know the old saying your mom taught you; two wrongs don't make a right.

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