I do agree reality was a lot more messy, but i also think it still paints a compelling case that Google in particular acted how it did (mostly) to shape the web to its own best interests.

That it wasn't literally "Google railroaded WHATWG/W3C/everyone else to get what it wanted" doesn't mean Google didn't take advantage of the situation to kill open web standards to its own benefit. I imagine Mozilla, for instance, went along with as much as they did because Google accounted for most of their revenue.