Win-win situation for Microsoft and Amazon
Popular LinkedIn articles appear in the "article waves". The recent waves were about Google memo and Infosys. Now, it is about the cooperation between Microsoft and Amazon. And I want to be a part of this wave.
For me, it all started with the article: Amazon’s Alexa and Microsoft’s Cortana are going to work together. I remember some reports showing Alexa as a market leader, so I was confused after reading this. Is Cortana integration with Microsoft's applications a real value for Amazon? Is this enough for giving back thousands of Alexa skills?
Then I took a second look. Bing is already a default search engine for Alexa. Microsoft competes with Amazon rather just in the public cloud area. And it is like Amazon is a leader of IaaS, while Microsoft is good with PaaS and, especially, SaaS (e.g. Office 365). On the other hand, Google and Facebook are/will be Amazon's direct competitors in advertising, shopping and video.
I agree that even just the voice assistants' cooperation is valuable for both sides. Good summary on this is presented e.g. in the article: Why Amazon And Microsoft Are Joining Forces On Voice.
But it's not over yet. There is a broader context.
Microsoft does a favor even in the mentioned cloud area! Amazon engineers were supporting Microsoft to integrate its Visual Studio (IDE) with AWS. And something happens in freeware Visual Studio Code as well:
For me it looks like a bigger cooperation and a part of a broader strategy.
And my thoughts? Looking into the crystal ball and knowing that the next update of Windows 10 is going to support mixed reality, I'd say that Alexa is a great improvement for Microsoft. And being a part of a mixed reality system can help Amazon with their potential messenger app - Anytime. Merging this with another interesting vision, Amazon and Microsoft cooperation may result in AR social media giant, which would overtake Facebook and Google.
But even without going so much into the future, we have a win-win situation for both Microsoft and Amazon, at present.