It's not that they didn't want to pay, they wanted to make a fully open source mobile OS. Going with OpenJDK would have forced them to make Android GPL which would have been a no-no for carriers and going with Sun's licensed JVM would have made Android not open source. So Google had to go with their own VM if they wanted to have an open source mobile OS based on Java.
/edit/ I should point out I am worried about what other VMs this has implications for and not really liking software patents in the first place (if it can be copyrighted, I don't think it should be patentable).
I can't think of a single Android device that doesn't let you install your own build on it. (After some coercing, of course.)
Because carriers are staggeringly stupid, I think.
> I can't think of a single Android device that doesn't let you install your own build on it.
I wish that were true: "Unlike the DROID, the Milestone has a bootloader that only allows signed Firmware to load. This prevents users from booting Custom ROM images not signed by Motorola that have become popular in the Droid modding community."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Droid#Motorola_Milesto...
Many Motorola phones are similarly restricted. Did I mention carriers are phenomenally stupid?
If carriers really wanted to lock down devices, they would use techniques like the crypto cards ATMs have do. Instead, they do the equivalent of asking you really nicely not to root the device.
Motorola tries harder than most, though, I will agree.
Not unless it was done quite recently. The Droid X and Droid 2 are still locked down.
> If carriers really wanted to lock down devices, they would use techniques like the crypto cards ATMs have do.
From what I've read the Droid X's bootloader is quite a bit like that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPL_linking_exception
Ie. apps that only use the Java system libraries don't have to be GPL'ed, only modifications of the VM itself. Google didn't want to place this restriction on Android vendors.
also, from: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html
> The GNU General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License. But first, please read <http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-not-lgpl.html>.