This has never been true. We wouldn't have JavaScript if Netscape didn't go off and do their own thing. Netscape and Microsoft were locked in a fierce embrace-and-extend battle for the web. XMLHttpRequest wasn't even a standard when Gmail came out in 2004, and wasn't a standard until at least 2006.

Web standards merely describe the current world of web browsers and attempt to retroactively take credit for it.

Back in the day yes. Modern web standards upgrades are designed (a) because Google wants them, (b) for regulatory capture -- making it too difficult for a browser to be created (I'm abusing the term to refer to behavior regulated by "web standards").

The question is cooperation between who exactly? A cooperation can turn into a collusion. And all I can see as members of these boards is a bunch of corporations, that are known for using underhanded tactics.

Web standards are whatever Google says web standards are, and will always be adjusted to whatever Chrome does.