Does that change any of what I said? She's personified in order to make us comfortable with improving search results in order to sell us more ads.
It's kind of obvious ..
No its not obvious.
As much as I would humor the sort of suspicious things (I play Deus Ex) I think you're trying to draw connections to fit a predetermined situation where there are none.
She's personified to be a better assistant with the potential fringe benefit of what you're saying.
Cortana is not Bing. Cortana is powered by Bing.
Well you know, Google Now is a great service, but I don't think they stick ads in the cards there.
I understand the sentiment, but you're grabbing at straws. A major factor she's called Cortana is that the community pestered MS for it. No its not like there was a round table of illuminati folks thinking. "OK men, we need a fancy name for this assistant so people will throw data at us"
MS is made up of people. If I worked in the Cortana team, I'd champion Cortana because its a good name, people like it, etc. Not for the sake of "ohoho ads ads ads!"
Bing exists to offer data and searches. It also sells the potential eyeballs it gets to advertisers. Metadata is for better targeting, which is more valuable to advertisers. Trying to sell me a fancy new purse doesn't help anyone. Trying to sell me a phone, maybe, is more relevant.
MS's chief goal is making money. If one way is through ads, sure. If they cross a line, OK watch the storm happen. But that's not conducive to money-making.