embrace, extend, and extinguish

A business strategy of implementing a public standard or developing software compatible with it, adding features not supported by the public standard, then marginalizing competition that does not (or cannot) support such proprietary additions. Popularized during the United States v. Microsoft Corp. antitrust trial as a phrase used internally by Microsoft regarding its own business philosophy. The global tech giant has seemingly taken "embrace, extend, and extinguish" as its business motto in recent years, sucking up all sorts of various web-based technologies over the years and mutating them into proprietary forms that no one else can hope to compete with. "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" is the name of the game around here, so if you want to keep your company, I wouldn't divulge any trade secrets to the CEO. A: "Do you want all of the innovations of Silicon Valley to be under your umbrella?" B: "'Embrace, extend, and extinguish' is pretty self-explanatory, is it not?"