I think you are underplaying the support of H.264. Almost every single camera (video or photo), console, handheld device, browser, editing tool, effects tool, phone, tablet, OS, digital video player, website available today supports H.264.
People complain about it being closed but actually it is far more open on the hardware side since each of the big manufacturers are part of the H.264 process.
h.264 has several profiles. Support for particular profiles in hardware varies. If you want to do low latency encoding with a hardware "h.264 encoder" for video conferencing you may find that you're out of luck. Since there is only one VP8 profile, hardware VP8 means hardware VP8.
People complain about it being closed but actually it is far more open on the hardware side since each of the big manufacturers are part of the H.264 process.