This seems more like a product of love from one developer. Doesn't seem like a cunning move in some grand scheme. Companies don't have personality and even company culture is very hard to maintain across many offices spread out over the globe.
"Embrace and extend" I think - appear to adopt or support a technology only to attempt to influence, limit and block later developments. Other examples: J#, the Office XML standards etc etc
The “third e” is extinguish.