Embrace, extend and extinguish

Embrace, extend and extinguish is a phrase used to describe Microsoft Corporation's strategy toward Internet and other standards and was outlined in a series of memos known as the Halloween documents. It is a system based on the network effect. The strategy works like this:

1. Embrace: Microsoft publicly announces that they are going to support a standard. They assign employees to work with the standards bodies, such as the W3C and the IETF.
2. Extend: They do support the standard, at least partially, but start adding Microsoft-only extensions of the standard to their products. They argue that they are trying only to add value for their customers, who want them to provide these features.
3. Extinguish: Through various means, such as driving use of their extended standard through their server products and developer tools, they increase use of the proprietary extensions to the point that competitors who do not follow the Microsoft version of the standard cannot compete. Unfortunately, the Microsoft version uses proprietary technologies such as ActiveX that places competitors at a distinct disadvantage. The Microsoft standard then becomes the only standard that matters in practical terms, because it allows the company to control the industry by controlling the standard.

Examples of attempts of "embrace, extend and extinguish":

• HTML and JavaScript
• Internet Explorer vs. Netscape Navigator
• Java
• Kerberos
• XBox vs. PS2
• Doublespace[?] vs. Stacker[?]
• Excel vs. QuattroPro[?]
• Microsoft BASIC
• add more

Some observers suspect that Microsoft intends to do a similar thing to the C# programming language, by first getting many users for the ECMA-standard version of the language, then later adding proprietary extensions and removing support for the standards-based version.

In the first edition of The Road Ahead[?] by Bill Gates, he explains in detail his plans to use the network effect to Microsoft's advantage. The book was first published before the company became involved in antitrust proceedings.

The "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy seems to have had limited usefulness. It has only been partially successful in balkanising HTML, mostly through the alternations to the Document Object Model in Internet Explorer. One flaw in this strategy is that incompatible enhancements generally create customer pushback especially when those enhancements have limited usefulness. ActiveX is an example of a Microsoft technology that has met with customer resistance.

So far, standards embodied in popular free software implementations have appeared to be resistant to the "Embrace, extend and extinguish" strategy, as the provisions of free software licences prevent the third phase of the plan from being executed, by ensuring that any vendor extensions to the software are available to the community, and cannot be tied to any single vendor. One could create a proprietary "clean-room" reimplementation -- a technique often used to create free software workalikes of proprietary programs -- but would have an uphill battle in a marketplace already flooded with the free implementation.

External Links

• DDJ article on Microsoft's attempts to do this to the Kerberos security protocol (http://www.ddj.com/documents/s=882/ddj0008q/0008q.htm)
• 1998 accusation of Microsoft's desire to apply 'extend, embrace and extinguish' competition to Intel (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-512681?legacy=zdnn)