> It's worth pointing out that the list of examples of "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" on the wikipedia page of that name [1] contains zero actual successful examples of it working.
Looks like the successful examples were successful enough for everybody to forget about the originals. There is basically no other YP/Kerberos/SMB implementation in use that didn't follow from the MS copy. Netscape was successfully lead to bankruptcy. All the EEE days platform independent dev-tools were successfully lead to bankruptcy. All the EEE days competing office suites were successfully lead to bankruptcy...
SMB seems alive and well? I don't see an "Extinguish" there.
You seem to be conflating "beat in the marketplace" with EEE. Netscape didn't fail because of ActiveX. They failed because web browsers and web servers became free.
Competing office suites struggle not because Microsoft extended some underlying protocol. Like it or not (and I personally don't), Office delivers an incredible amount of business value to its users.
Platform independent dev-tools were, and are, still around. But like the browser, it's tough to make a living selling dev tools when they are generally free.
Microsoft has been a very successful company for many reasons. It's not clear that "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" is one of them.
Looks like the successful examples were successful enough for everybody to forget about the originals. There is basically no other YP/Kerberos/SMB implementation in use that didn't follow from the MS copy. Netscape was successfully lead to bankruptcy. All the EEE days platform independent dev-tools were successfully lead to bankruptcy. All the EEE days competing office suites were successfully lead to bankruptcy...