Android, Inc. (the original company) chose Java because their target market (smartphones) nearly universally supported Java (JVM) at the time of the inception of Android, so the phones ran Java and phone developers knew and were comfortable with Java.

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_%28operating_system%29#...

I was unable to ascertain whether Dalvik came from Android, Inc. or was created by Google after acquiring Android. My memory says the later.

The Dalvik VM is an end-run around the Sun JVM licensing issue: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalvik_virtual_machine

See especially the reference http://www.betaversion.org/~stefano/linotype/news/110/

This raised more than one eyebrowse, and sure did make me raise mine: how did Google manage to get Sun to license off a platform that could very well kill their own?

Turns out, they didn’t: their move was even smarter than Sun’s.

Today Google released the Android code and I took a serious look at its internals... and found the solution for the licensing problem. It’s called Dalvik and it’s the new name of Sun’s worst nightmares.

My recollection is that Dalvik was always a key part of Android and it came along to Google when they bought it.

Also, key Android people came from Danger which was Java-based.

Google didn't create Android. They bought it.