You're not seriously asking me that are you? Have you seen kitkat? I talk much hate against Google but I'm not blind. Microsoft dev are more of a scattergun approach to development than managing a consistent look and feel for all apps. Look at how bing food and drink looks and feels as compared to say Flipboard on Windows 8 and Flipboard on ios. Like night and day. Bing food and drink is one of the most classy looking apps it has. Same for Bing news and OneNote. Apps like Foursquare on android and ios look and behave consistently and have a similar functionality. The same app on WP by contrast looks clunky and dated. Tunein radio on ios looks modern, fresh, inviting for touch. On our platform its like an am radio granddad had next to his denture glass. Moreover, like Cortana, Google Now asks what your interests are, places you visit, foods you like etc. You can't seriously think Cortana will not be challenged in a serious way by android do you? Its already happening cousin. It is of no consequence that kitkat hasn't had an update, neither has WP8. Most are not in the dev program and don't yet have what Now and kitkat offer today. I love WP but I'm very realistic when comes to form and function. Either WP is a hobby or a serious device worth our time and treasure.
OK I believe I misunderstood you from the beginning. I agree with you for the most part. In the original post I quoted, I understood that you were saying that features in WP8.1 & Cortana will be hijacked by Samsung & Google, and improved,
and that you've seen it already happening. I said that I can't see how it can already be happening because WP8.1 has only been out as a preview for a few weeks, and KitKat hasn't had any updates since then.
I firmly believe, as you do, that Cortana will be challenged. But it's not like Android is copying and then improving. From what I've experienced with Cortana, it brings very little that Google Now doesn't already have.
FWIW, the Android OS itself is quite bare of features. If you take out all apps, WP8.1 has more features than Android. However, most Android devices come with a lot of Google apps preinstalled. Good or bad, love it or hate it, that's the way Google operates. The apps integrate so tightly that it's pretty much the same as being part of the core OS, but yet they can be updated separately. Google also leaves some of it up to the dev community. One example is Listen, Google's podcast app. Google dropped it because they said that there were so many good 3rd party alternatives that there was no reason for them to maintain Listen anymore.
And for the record, yes I've seen KitKat! My primary device is a Nexus 5. I also carry a Lumia 920, so I use both sides all the time.