Etymology

embrace, extend and extinguish

Today it means: A strategy of marketing that involves extending widely used standards of product categories with proprietary capabilities, and then using the differences to disadvantage its competitors. Full definition →

Ask AI about its historyChatGPTClaudePerplexityGoogle AIGrok

The story

Formerly used internally by Microsoft. First described outside Microsoft in a 1996 New York Times article entitled "Microsoft Trying to Dominate the Internet".

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.