When Microsoft brought Cortana onto Windows 10, unsurprisingly all queries and websites launched through Cortana was through the Edge browser. Given that Cortana and Edge are both Microsoft-made apps, this was kind of to be expected. However Windows 10 users eventually found a way to circumvent that, which in turn saw Cortana launch third-party browsers like Chrome instead.Unfortunately for users Microsoft is none too pleased about your craftiness. In a post on the Windows Blog, Microsoft has announced that moving forward they will be locking Cortana to the Edge browser, meaning that the voice assistant feature will now only work with the Edge browser as opposed to third-party alternatives like before.
According to Microsoft, they claim that using third-party browsers could result in a compromised experience that is “less reliable and predictable”. They write, “The continuity of these types of task completion scenarios is disrupted if Cortana can’t depend on Bing as the search provider and Microsoft Edge as the browser.”
To that end, “Starting today, to ensure we can deliver the integrated search experience designed for Windows 10, Microsoft Edge will be the only browser that will launch when you search from the Cortana box.” However Microsoft reiterates that this only applies to Cortana, and that if you want to use Chrome, Firefox, or Opera as your default browser, or if you want to use Google as your search engine, you can still go ahead and do so.
Filed in . Read more about Cortana, Edge, Microsoft and Windows 10.