The whole point is that the W3C has been impotent when it comes to HTML for a decade now. They're not publishing anything Google wants in that domain because they're not publishing anything. HTML was taken out of the W3C's control because of their mismanagement it well before Google had a browser majority (let alone a monopoly).
Because browser vendors refused to implement XHTML properly, and then Mozzilla folks pushed for HTML5 outside W3C, Web freedom, what an irony than now Google plays Simon says.
That's false. Browser vendors implemented XHTML so the Web wasn't a broken mess. You can't force developers to write perfect markup. XHTML had lots of undefined behavior and bad failure modes. Implementing XHTML "properly" meant breaking the web, but that's not what the W3C cared about, they cared about standards for standards sake.
Let me be clear: XHTML didn't materially benefit anyone at all except the people who were putting their names on a standard. HTML 5 actually fixed real problems. It made parsing HTML sensible and exhaustively defined. It added open features that companies like Macromedia, Apple, Real, Sun, and Microsoft had a monopoly on for a decade prior. Unlike the W3C, the WHATWG made actual, real life people's lives meaningfully better.
Moreover, most of the things Google is pushing for aren't HTML. Protected Audiences—the ad targeting API Google wants—is sitting in front of the W3C folks as part of the WICG.
Developers will do whatever browser vendors push them to do, and they clearly decided they did want to push HTML5 agenda instead.
Now, Firefox is for all purposes dead, just fairing a bit better than The Year of Linux Desktop, Safari with Apple doing its own thing thanks iDevices market share, and everyone else is basically a reskinned Chrome, or Electron garbage, solidifying ChromeOS as the future we all deserve to have, as the IE lesson is long forgotten.
