Sorry, ON2 is a codec company that prior to being bought by google was in the business of selling their codecs, VP8 included. Now, either they were good at it, then it was OK to pay that price and we would have a good codec. Or they were not and it needs google's resourses and "the entire internet" to fix that, but then google overpaid. Which one is it?

It's a good codec. But as you can see, the specification was clearly not finished. So On2 sold a codec package that wasn't very polished. Doesn't mean it wasn't worth the money. It just means that polish needs to be applied, and now that it's open, it will.