The author was capable of using the word "embrace", but wasn't clueful enough to meaningfully use the phrase "embrace and extend". So I can't accept his essay as "getting it".

A better article would be: "How to Kill a Decentralised Network (such as the Fediverse)": https://ploum.net/2023-06-23-how-to-kill-decentralised-netwo... ...where the historical example of what happened to XMPP - where Google embraced and extended it - was far more relevant.