
When you strike at a king you must kill him. - ivankirigin
http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/emerson_and_oli_1.html
======
ivankirigin
Perhaps related:
[http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=133&q=105](http://www.losanjealous.com/nfc/perm.php?c=133&q=105)

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not
become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will
gaze back into you.

------
gscott
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish... worked great for Microsoft for decades. How to
extend that to web apps though?

~~~
mxh
Silverlight is EEE for the web.

First, MSFT deploys Silverlight clients broadly. In this phase, they will do
just about anything to see it deployed on any platform available, specifically
including Linux and MacOS. Continue until essentially all new computers
include a Silverlight client.

Secondly, persuade developers that Silverlight is a viable platform. This
requires (1) - mass developer adoption of a sparsely-deployed or Windows-only
web platform won't happen, not even with MSFT's marketing muscle. Continue
until Silverlight achieves Flash-like ubiquity.

Thirdly, either through patents, DMCA, obscurity, or all three, kill off any
non-MSFT Silverlight server-side solutions. Ensure that Silverlight app
quality is superior to web apps by, if necessary, sabotaging web standards
efforts and keeping IE buggy.

At that point, if you want to deploy a 'serious' app over the Internet, you'll
(hopefully, from MSFT's perspective) feel strongly compelled to pay the MSFT
tax and buy Silverlight servers. (For extra fun, in a few years, maybe MSFT
chokes off non-Windows Silverlight client implementations. That's extra-
speculative, however. My core speculation is that Silverlight is best
understood as MSFT's play for the datacenter.)

A lot of money has been made by companies who successfully set up 'toll
booths' between buyers and sellers. MSFT's OS monopoly was based upon
providing the means for application developers to deliver their wares to
consumers. Game console maker's profits are based upon their ability to
restrict access to the gamers who own their consoles to companies who give
them money. (I'm not saying this is unethical, just how the money is made.)
The web undermines this model; the standards are open and (pretty) simple,
clients and servers are freely available, and therefore there's no way to
erect a toll booth between app developers/content publishers and consumers.

It looks to me that MSFT would like to change that. (So would Adobe, but
they're a lot less able to pull it off.)

Anyway, a little paranoia for you there. Enjoy!

~~~
wmf
This isn't all that paranoid; Adobe's business model for Flash is similar,
although they haven't attacked Red5 yet.

