Forum Discussion
Ask Cortana / Ask Bing - Discussion
Hello Insiders!
Thank you so much for your feedback. We are excited to announce sidebar search - the first step in our evolution of contextual search in the new Microsoft Edge.
You can find more details about sidebar search in this post - https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/discussions/introducing-sidebar-search-in-microsoft-edge/m-p/1406242
Thanks!
I too was a big fan of Ask Cortana. The reason it's better than the "Search with Bing" option is because it doesn't take you to a new page. It gives you smart (Cortana-powered) results in a floating sidebar.
I think I've given this example elsewhere, but one time I was reading a pdf of a friend's post-grad level paleontology paper. Needless to say, it involved a lot of dinosaur names and other technical words not in my everyday vocab. Ask Cortana was a huge boon. I would highlight a term, Ask Cortana, and info complete with images and definitions would fly out on the right side of the screen, while not navigating me out of the pdf viewer. I would get the gist of what was meant, and then continue reading the paper. It was brilliant. It was also unique to Edge. In a landscape awash in browsers, especially Chromium browsers, Edge needs Microsoft-only features like Ask Cortana to help give it the "edge" it needs to compete (sorry, couldn't resist).