The relevant point being that Google didn't want to license Java under the standard terms because they wanted control over the platform, and certainly partially

The relevant point being that Google didn't want to license Java under the standard terms because they wanted control over the platform, and certainly partially because they saw what happened to Microsoft. It certainly wasn't just the technical matter of reproducing "166 APIs", there was the whole political angle of putting Android under control of Sun/Oracle's committees. (And just on a trivial note, Microsoft eventually created their own 'clean-room' Java called "J#". It died in obscurity, but Google wasn't the first.)