What does owning a video codec even mean if you make it royalty-free? Is there a concern that if webm becomes widely used Google will use its control of the cod

What does owning a video codec even mean if you make it royalty-free? Is there a concern that if webm becomes widely used Google will use its control of the code to harm competitors? In that case, you should know that the webm project is in fact run as a separate project from Google[1]. [1]http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/ http://www.webmproject.org/about/supporters/