VP8 is BSD licensed, which is even more permissive than GPL, so I'm not sure what your non GPL argument was about. VP8 is actively developed with participation of Xiph so it is open project.

To note - VP8 is the only open high quality codec suitable for streaming at present. So whatever the intention of Google was, the benefit is obvious - open codec for everyone to use. The only potential alternative could be Daala codec, but it's in early development so it's a non option (yet).

Nokia is obviously playing the vile card here, just showing everyone a jerky behavior, in attempt to disrupt open codec adoption. In this case it's not Nokia vs Google. It's Nokia vs open video, simply because there are no other alternatives.

I wouldn't read anything from Florian Mueller - he has a clear pro patent / pro copyright position, and he was used by Oracle to defend copyrightability of APIs. I'm not really interested in these kind of reviewers.