Embrace, extend and extinguish

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"Embrace, extend and extinguish,"[1] also known as "Embrace, extend, and exterminate,"[2] is a phrase that the U.S. Department of Justice alleged[3] was used internally by Microsoft[4] to describe their strategy for entering product categories involving widely used standards, extending those standards with proprietary capabilities, and then using those differences to disadvantage its competitors. The strategy and phrase "embrace and extend" were first described in a 1996 New York Times article entitled "Microsoft Trying to Dominate the Internet,"[5] in which John Markoff said, "Rather than merely embrace and extend the Internet, the company's critics now fear, Microsoft intends to engulf it." The phrase was also reported to have appeared in a motivational song by an anonymous Microsoft employee[6], and in an interview of Steve Ballmer by the New York Times[7].

The more widely used variation, "embrace, extend and extinguish," was first introduced in the United States v. Microsoft antitrust trial when the vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady, testified[8] that Microsoft vice president Paul Maritz used the phrase in a 1995 meeting with Intel to describe Microsoft's strategy toward Netscape, Java, and the Internet.[9][10] In this context, the phrase means to highlight the final phase of Microsoft's strategy as raised by McGeady, which was to drive customers away from smaller competitors.

Contents

[edit] The strategy

The alleged strategy's three phases are:

  1. Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
  2. Extend: Addition and promotion of features not supported by the competing product or part of the standard, creating interoperability problems for customers who try to remain neutral.
  3. Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support Microsoft's extensions and create an obstacle to new competitors.

The U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft critics, and computer-industry journalists[11][12][13] claim that the goal of the strategy is to monopolize a product category. Microsoft asserts that the strategy is not anti-competitive, but rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes customers want.[14]

[edit] Examples

The plaintiffs in the antitrust case claimed that Microsoft had added support for ActiveX controls in the Internet Explorer web browser to break compatibility with Netscape Navigator, which used components based on Java and Netscape's own plugin system. The plaintiffs also accused Microsoft of using an "embrace and extend" strategy with regard to the Java platform, by omitting the Java Native Interface from its implementation and providing J/Direct for a similar purpose. According to an internal communication, Microsoft sought to downplay Java's cross-platform capability and make it the "latest, greatest way to write Windows applications." Microsoft paid Sun US$20 million in January 2001 to settle the resulting legal implications of their breach of contract.[15]

In 2000, an extension to the Kerberos networking protocol (an Internet standard) was included in Windows 2000, effectively denying all products except those made by Microsoft access to a Windows 2000 Server using Kerberos.[16]. The extension was published through an executable, whose running required agreeing to a NDA, disallowing third party implementation (especially Open Source). To allow developers to implement the new features, without having to agree to the license, users on Slashdot.org posted the document (disregarding the NDA), effectively allowing third party developers to access the documentation without having agreed to the NDA. Microsoft responded by asking Slashdot.org to remove the content. [17]

In 2001, CNet's News.com described an instance of "embrace, extend, extinguish" concerning Microsoft's instant messaging program.[18]

In 2007, Ronald Alepin gave sworn expert testimony for the plaintiffs in Comes v. Microsoft in which he cited internal Microsoft emails to justify the claim that the company intentionally employed this practice. [19]

[edit] Counter-criticism

Business strategies of Microsoft that were characterized as 'Embrace, Extend and Exterminate' tactics might merely have been rational business decisions. For example, in the Browser wars, other companies besides Microsoft introduced proprietary, non-standards-compliant extensions (for example, Netscape, which introduced the FONT tag, and other HTML extensions in 1995). As well, companies prioritized reducing time-to-market,[20] over waiting for standards bodies to finalize decisions.[21]

[edit] See also

[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ "Deadly embrace", The Economist, 2000-03-30. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  2. ^ Microsoft limits XML in Office 2003. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  3. ^ US Department of Justice Proposed Findings of Fact - Revised.
  4. ^ US Department of Justice Proposed Findings of Fact.
  5. ^ John Markoff. "Microsoft Trying to Dominate the Internet", New York Times, July 16, 1996.
  6. ^ Rebello, Kathy. "INSIDE MICROSOFT (Part 1)", Business Week, 1996-07-15. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  7. ^ Steve Lohr, "Preaching from the Ballmer Pulpit." New York Times, Sunday, January 28, 2007. pp. 3-1, 3-8, 3-9.
  8. ^ Steven McGeady court testimony. Retrieved on 2006-03-31. (DOC format)
  9. ^ United States v. Microsoft: Trial Summaries (page 2). Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  10. ^ IN MICROSOFT WE TRUST. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  11. ^ Deadly embrace. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  12. ^ Microsoft messaging tactics recall browser wars. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  13. ^ Embrace, Extend, Extinguish: Three Strikes And You're Out. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  14. ^ U.S. v. Microsoft: We're Defending Our Right to Innovate. Retrieved on 2006-03-31.
  15. ^ Sun, Microsoft settle Java suit. Retrieved on 2001-01-23.
  16. ^ Microsoft's Kerberos shuck and jive (2000-05-11).
  17. ^ Microsoft Asks Slashdot To Remove Readers' Posts.
  18. ^ Jim Hu (2001-06-07). Microsoft messaging tactics recall browser wars. CNet News.com.
  19. ^ Expert Testimony of Ronald Alepin in Comes v. Microsoft - Embrace, Extend, Extinguish, Groklaw, January 8, 2007.
  20. ^ IE 5.5 angers Web standards advocates. Retrieved on 2006-11-07. "No company is going to wait"
  21. ^ The Problem with Standards. Retrieved on 2006-11-07.

[edit] External links

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