"Embrace and Extend" is
Microsoft's
euphemism for taking over a company and re-arranging the
acquired company's
technology to the point that it is
incompatible with the company's older products or it becomes Microsoft-only technology. This is their
definition of "
innovation."
As of this writing, the current example of Microsoft's "embrace and extend" strategy is to make proprietary extensions to the Kerberos protocol that only works with Windows 2000 computers (http://slashdot.org/articles/00/03/02/0958226.shtml). After receiving complaints from the press, Microsoft "releases" the information about the extensions, provided the readers of this info have to swear secrecy to the BillGod (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/02/158204). In the same Slashdot article, posters have already released the information, being that Kerberos is and should be kept an open protocol always.
Afterwards, a lawyer from Microsoft tells Slashdot and Andover to take down the "modified" Kerberos info (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/05/11/0153247). Little did the lawyer know what lies beyond the furnance that is the Slashdot readers and editors...