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Comment by tomnipotent | Hacker News Reader

Then EVERY single other business of its size has a strategy that looks like "Embrace". The only difference is that Microsoft had a memo leak.

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... which is exactly the problem. The issue is the tactic, not the company employing it. It’s just this company has a serious habit of employing those tactics, hence the distrust.

I'd like anyone in any business contemplating an Embrace, Extinguish strategy to know that it ends in people not trusting your company and being unwilling to work with your services.

I would like to know how much it is costing Microsoft to fix that damaged reputation so that other executives will know if they do this it will end up costing at least X amount.

Hmm... I would think that it will cost Microsoft a rethinking of their business strategy.

If their 'Embrace' looks like 'Yes we are compatible with...' and their 'Extend' like 'If you use our layer you can also do...' then people stay sceptical.

Instead their 'Embrace' should be 'How can we help you with your open source product?' and their 'Extend': 'Here are patches that fixes problems, improves performance and implement community wanted features.'

It seems companies like this always try to hold the door to 'Extinguish' open.

I really don't think reputational damage in this case came from adopting an embrace-and-extend strategy as such, but rather the monopolistic position they were in combined with specific tactics they used.

That might be the reason why many people dislike all businesses of Microsoft's size. I for one wouldn't be happy if Google or Amazon or Apple bought Github either.

I completely agree. The biggest issue here is that we are losing a neutral player as the top comment says. The tech world is that much more monopolistic without an independent GitHub.

The Memo leak was just the tip of the iceberg. MS also lost multiple court cases about their anticompetitive behaviour (for example gov of US, Sun) in that era.

Did you forget the Extend, Extinguish parts of the strategy, or are you just paraphrasing EEE to make it sound somewhat ok?

Pretty sure he means that just seeing symptoms of Embrace is not enough to sound the alarm that it's going to be extended and extinguished.

After all, what's the point of building software, if it's never embraced, aka, used?

The typical implication of "Embrace" in these EEE uses is not 'figure out how to work in tandem with' but more 'how can we the amoeba surround and prepare to Extinguish this'.

Hence the justified caution and monitoring of a known extinguisher.

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