Embrace → Extend → Eliminate
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is the literal translation of the competitive strategy *Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (EEE)* that Microsoft is said to have adopted in the 1990s. The procedure consists of the following three steps
Embrace
Fully incorporate existing open standards and popular technologies, and reassure users and developers by appealing to them as "highly compatible.
Around 1995, Internet Explorer appeared as a "standard" HTML/HTTP implementation.
Extend
Add proprietary functions and provide "convenience" that is slightly incompatible with standards. Expand proprietary APIs and specifications that are difficult for competitors to follow.
Implement ActiveX, VBScript, original extended HTML tags, etc. in IE.
Extinguish
When proprietary extensions become the de facto standard, competing products that adhere only to the original standard appear "incompatible" and lose market share.
Netscape Navigator rapidly declined due to an increase in the number of pages that did not work due to the flood of IE's own extensions.
The U.S. Department of Justice cited this phrase in evidence in the 1998-1999 antitrust litigation and confirmed that the phrase "embrace, extend, extinguish" was mentioned in internal memos and testimony.
The gist of the strategy and each step is also organized in a later published 1994 J. Allard memo and several technical blogs.
Even today, the metaphor of "embrace, expand, and then eliminate" is used to ridicule the practice of taking OSS, enclosing it with proprietary extensions, and finally excluding competitors from the market.
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