Microsoft wants you to use Cortana search box only with Edge and Bing

In an effort to increase the adoption of its Bing search engine and Edge browser, Microsoft has a new mandatory order for Windows 10 users: search only using Bing and open all of the links with Edge.

That means the Cortana search feature in Windows 10 will not be able to perform what you will ask it to do if you use third-party search engines such as Google and Yahoo and launch the links using a non-Microsoft browser like Opera, Safari, Google Chrome and Firefox.

But that does not mean you won’t be able to set Google Chrome or any other third-party browsers as your default in Windows 10, nor does that disable you from setting Google or Yahoo as your default search engine in the new Microsoft operating system for PCs.

The change reflects Microsoft’s longstanding effort to advance the use of its own products across all Windows 10 powered computers. Cortana search box works to search through documents, computer settings, software applications installed and the Web using the digital assistant spawned by the software giant many years ago.

The reason behind the change, according to the Redmond-based company, is that Windows 10 users deserve the full Cortana experience. But that’s plain marketing, though it makes sense somehow. Bing powers Cortana and the Edge browser is needed to enable some of the digital assistant’s features to work smoothly.

Microsoft laments that some software configurations try to change how Windows 10 works in a way that’s inconsistent with the design of Cortana. This as Windows 10 continues to attract more users following its full rollout since July 29 of last year. As a result, user experience is compromised and the reliability of Cortana is questioned, according to Microsoft. Which is quite true, given that Microsoft products somehow work in a different way from those of other software programs.

That is why Microsoft wants you to follow the team work of  Cortana, Microsoft Edge and Bing in order to experience the full offering of the search box found at the bottom of the task bar in Windows 10.

But if you take a deeper look at how Microsoft tries to shove its products down our throat, you can see the hegemony building up, especially for Windows PC users. It will only be a matter of time, then, before we see all our searches previously performed in Google Chrome or Firefox transitioned to Bing and Edge as a matter of course.