I didn't get the impression that the author was presenting any of these as drawbacks for Android. I think he or she discovered some interesting things about Android and thought it would be fun to share them with those who didn't know about them.

It sounds like all of these facts would be covered in the introduction to any android development book. Its version of linux is forked but that doesn't matter because your not developing for a desktop your developing for a phone. It doesn't need java me because even though your not using a non-JVM vm you just need to use whatever is allowed in the java api (same goes for sqlite).

They are the kind of things that I would have perceived to be drawbacks were I planning a development platform, but they don't appear to have hurt Android. I suspect that Google's backing might be influential in this regard.