Personally, I have no idea why people are so upset about WebM and AV1 and etc. Like sure, they're not necessarily God's gift to AV, but they're reasonable enough, and patent unencumbered. Google may be awful, but that doesn't mean the incentives can't align. I can tell you that my incentives are perpendicularly aligned with MPEG-LA's in this situation, so...
Hostages? I'd say Google is better than most regarding data portability, assuming that's what you're referring to, offering 'takeout' for just about everything.
