[chocopuff]

there's more detail here http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/236924/google_...

"What we've actually been asked to do by Larry and Sergey is to investigate what technology alternatives exist to Java for Android and Chrome," Google engineer Tim Lindholm wrote in the Aug. 2010 e-mail, referring to Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. "We've been over a hundred of these and think they all suck. We conclude that we need to negotiate a license for Java."

The e-mail's contents were revealed last week during a hearing on whether the findings of Oracle's damages expert should be set aside.

"You are going to be on the losing end of this document" if its contents are revealed to a jury, Judge William Alsup told Google's attorney during the hearing.

"That's a pretty good document for you," Alsup said earlier to Oracle's lawyer. "That ought to be big for you at trial."

Google, however, doesn't want such a potential smoking gun to make it that far.

[msg]

The context is very important (and not appearing in the email, right). The HTC Dream (G1) came out in late 2008. It was running Dalvik then.

I think what is more likely is this: Tim Lindholm was asked to figure out how to run standard Java programs on Chromebooks and Android tablets without Dalvik or recompilation. They wanted to gain some backwards compatibility but concluded it was impossible without a licensed JVM. Android and Chrome still lack the feature.