I think that is reductionistic and misguided. I don't know the exact inside story of course, but this is how I read it, and how I honestly think this happened.

I think that is reductionistic and misguided. I don't know the exact inside story of course, but this is how I read it, and how I honestly think this happened. They chose to have a garbage-collected, bytecode-VM-executed, OO language as the main platform for their external apps (the internal kernel is a still Linux with its regular C interface). They decided to implement their own VM from scratch (Dalvik). They decided to use Java language, including syntax and basic system APIs, which would make it very accessible for a ton of existing developers. They could as easily gone for another syntax and base API. It wouldn't have been more effort to design and implement (arguably, it could have been less). But of course it wouldn't be such an easy sell to existing Java developers. They opted to interpret Java language and API design as an open, public value, and that's what was dealt with in court.