Over 21,000 people want Microsoft to keep Cortana, Windows Phone's upcoming virtual assistant

Last week, we reported a curious incident including a Lumia 920 switching hands through eBay. But that wasn't just any Lumia, rather it was running an early developer build of Windows Phone 8.1 “Blue”, and the switching of hands resulted in a bunch of insights that weren't really supposed to leave Microsoft's labs for the time being.

Among the snippets of new information around the expected refresh of the OS was a curious piece. We, of course, are referring to 'Cortana', Windows Phone's upcoming virtual assistant that is expected to take Google Now and Apple's Siri for a spin.

Named after beloved AI character from the Halo series, Cortana's appeal to the masses of FPS-loving Halo fans was to be expected – Cortana has been ensuring life in the Halo universe continues on since 2001, after all. Having said that, we certainly didn't expect the mere possibility of a Cortana-named assistant to send a ripple through the interwebs strong enough to amass over 21,000 votes on Windows Phone's suggestion section in just four short days.

The suggestion itself has a WP fan pleading Microsoft to keep the Cortana naming as a marketing tool that may help win people over to the relatively nascent platform, based on the tonsof positive reactions from fans worldwide. Of course, whether Cortana is simply an early codename for the upcoming assistant remains up in the air. We sure as hell hope it makes it through, though!

via