The Strategy
The strategy's three phases are:
- Embrace: Development of software substantially compatible with a competing product, or implementing a public standard.
- 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 use the 'simple' standard.
- Extinguish: When extensions become a de facto standard because of their dominant market share, they marginalize competitors that do not or cannot support the new extensions.
The U.S. Department of Justice, Microsoft critics, and computer-industry journalists claim that the goal of the strategy is to monopolize a product category. Such a strategy differs from J. Allard's originally proposed strategy of embrace, extend then innovate both in content and phases. Microsoft claims that the original strategy is not anti-competitive, but rather an exercise of its discretion to implement features it believes customers want.
Read more about this topic: Embrace, Extend And Extinguish
Famous quotes containing the word strategy:
“The best strategy in life is diligence.”
—Chinese proverb.
“That is the way of youth and life in general: that we do not understand the strategy until after the campaign is over.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)