The strategy and phrase "embrace and extend" were first described outside Microsoft in a 1996 article in The New York Times titled "Tomorrow, the World Wide Web!
The phrase "embrace and extend" also appears in a facetious motivational song by an anonymous Microsoft employee,[6] and in an interview of Steve Ballmer by The New York Times.
[7] A variant of the phrase, "embrace, extend then innovate", is used in J Allard's 1994 memo "Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet"[8] to Paul Maritz and other executives at Microsoft.
Change the rules: Windows become the next-generation Internet tool of the future.The addition "extinguish" was introduced in the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial when then vice president of Intel, Steven McGeady, used the phrase[9] to explain Maritz's statement in a 1995 meeting with Intel that described Microsoft's strategy to "kill HTML by extending it".
"[16] The antitrust case's plaintiffs also accused Microsoft of using an "embrace and extend" strategy with regard to the Java platform, which was designed explicitly with the goal of developing programs that could run on any operating system, be it Windows, Mac, or Linux.
According to an internal communication, Microsoft sought to downplay Java's cross-platform capability and make it "just the latest, best way to write Windows applications".
[24] During the browser wars, Netscape implemented the "font" tag, among other HTML extensions, without seeking review from a standards body.
[27] Tom Warren of The Verge went as far as comparing Chrome to Internet Explorer 6, the default browser of Windows XP that was often targeted by competitors due to its similar ubiquity in the early 2000s.