In what is now Microsoft’s ancient history, the software giant was perhaps best-known for its “embrace and extend” strategy, by which it would usurp any technology that threatened the dominance of Windows by embracing it, extending it with Windows-specific advantages, and then essentially take over ownership of that technology because it was then just a feature of Windows.
I’ve joked in recent years that the Microsoft we see now under Satya Nadella has shifted this strategy dramatic to simply “embrace.” The touchy-feely Microsoft of today has never found a former competitor, a product or service, or any technology it can’t embrace outright. And the more open source it is, the better.
