Later Developments
Portico: Dr. Steve Markman was brought in to run the company in 1996 and hired Kevin Surace to head up a new telephony group. This new team of 60-70 people set out to create a voice recognition-based personal assistant service that would be as close to human interaction as possible. The first service delivered was Portico (was code named Serengeti in development), and the interface was called Mary. Mary could understand some 20 million English phrases and speak several thousand different phrases herself (in addition to the Text to Speech engine). Portico synchronized to popular devices such as the Palm Connected Organizer and Microsoft Outlook and handled voicemail, call forwarding, email, calendar etc., all through the user's own personal 800 number. The system was also scaled back and sold through many partners including Quest and Excite, as well as a free advertising supported service from General Magic called MagicTalk. At its peak, the system supported some 2.5 million users. General Magic was the first company to employ a large number of linguists to fine tune the human interaction and make it seem very real. "Mary" even had multiple responses for phrases spoken by the user so the user would often hear something slightly different from her. General Magic (inventors Kevin Surace, George White and others) applied for and were awarded several key patents in the voice recognition and artificial personality arena.
Icras: While Portico ran its voice portal business, the original handheld group was spun off in 1998 as Icras. The new company sold the Magic Cap OS as hardware named DataRover. The company focused on vertical market systems.
Microsoft: General Magic announced a major licensing deal with Microsoft in March 1998, including an investment by Microsoft. This gave Microsoft access to certain intellectual property, and gave General Magic the ability to work closer in integrating Portico with Microsoft products. It also brought much needed recognition to General Magic.
OnStar: The OnStar Virtual Advisor was developed at this time as well for General Motors. That service is still in wide use today (2011). The service is offered in many cars and trucks free for the first year of ownership. Like Portico before it, the service can handle email and certain call requests. It has a much more limited vocabulary, but still uses the original "Mary" as the voice interface.
With Onstar, Portico, MagicTalk, Excite, Microsoft and other partners, revenues began to rise and so did the stock. GMGC had traded below $1 in 1997 and rose to $18 by 2000.
The New Millennium: Most of the management that was involved in bringing Portico to market left by early 2000 to pursue other interests with Internet startups. A new team was brought in led by Kathleen Layton. The new team took the company in the direction of turning its voice services into enterprise software offerings. Unfortunately, the tech market began to crater, taking telecom and enterprise software with it. After 12 years in existence and at least 3 lives, the company announced it would cease operations on September 17th, 2002. The OnStar assets were turned over to EDS to run for General Motors. The patents were auctioned by the court, and mostly purchased by Paul Allen.
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