Fifa World Cup 2014: Germany Will Beat Brazil and Argentina Will Best The Netherlands in Semi Finals Predicts Cortana

Microsoft's Cortana has struck gold once again as her World Cup quarter-finals predictions came true. The digital assistant on Microsoft's Windows Phones predicted that Argentina, Brazil, Germany and the Netherlands would emerge victorious in their quarter-final matches in the Fifa World Cup 2014.

Now, Cortana predicts that Germany will beat the host country Brazil in the semi-final. Apart from this, she also predicts that Argentina will beat The Netherlands to go to the final. If Cortana's prediction does come true, then this will be Germany's best performance at the World Cup since their defeat in the final of the 2002 World Cup.

Thanks to carefully analysed data from Microsoft's Bing search engine, Cortana has been able to predict the outcome of every match of this year's World Cup elimination round. In fact, the digital assistant has accurately predicted more World Cup wins than Paul the Octopus: The sea creature, who supposedly had psychic abilities and went on to predict the winning team in eight of the 2010 tournament's matches — including the final.

Cortana's predictions come from Microsoft's Bing search engine, which was tweaked at the beginning of the tournament to support World Cup predictions. Apart from sports events, the search engine has also forecast the outcomes of reality-TV shows, including The Voice, Dancing With The Stars and American Idol.

How does it work? Here is Microsoft's explanation of the process.

Owing to the fact that Cortana has been receiving a lot of attention for her flawless predictions, Apple has been trying to get Siri to do the same. However, Siri isn't offering confident and direct answers like Cortana and is playing it safe.