Android arguably saved Java by making it much more relevant than it otherwise would have been.
Java was just starting to get revitalized after a long period of stagnation. Java 7 was a big deal and for a long time Android devs were limited to a weird amalgamation of Java 6 and a few Java 7 features.
Then Java 8 came with lots of great Stream goodies (and a lot more) while Android devs are still forced do to make due with unofficial backports or cutting off most Android devices (API 24) is the first to support them natively.
Android development gets mindshare for Android, not Java. The speed of the transition from Java to Kotlin shows how antsy devs were to get away from Java.
There are interesting things happening with Java, and they’re all outside of Android
Counterclaim: If it were not such a big legal hazzle, it would have been a lot more easy for Google to update to new Java versions fast on Android.
Apparently the risk was not so large they couldn’t do it if they’ve decided to now
Perhaps, but is that a good thing if you're Oracle? Especially considering the fact that it's Google Java that's thriving and not Oracle Java.
But, with Android, Java got a boost that bled over to the server, and to a lesser extent, the desktop. It can be argued what the size of that boost was, and if it had any real impact (I would argue that it was not significant), but it was still a boost that they never would have had.
Anyway, that's the opinion of some random guy on the internet.
Around 2006, many companies were moving their server stacks from C++, considered old and stagnated, into Java application servers.
I took part in several such projects.
SavaJe OS was going to be the next generation when Android came into the scene.
Android first architecture diagrams look quite similar to the initial SavaJe OS presentations.
Sun buying SavaJe was pretty clearly a response to Android, so it's pretty disingenuous to say that Android killed SavaJe.
1999 - SavaJe is founded
2006 - Jasper S20 with SavaJe OS gets presented at Java ONE
2006 - End of the year, SavaJe fails to gain another round of investment, in spite of the successful reception at Java ONE
2007 - April, Sun public announcement to buy SavaJe assets
2007 - November, Open Handset Alliance is created
2008 - November, HTC Dream gets released as the very first Android device. The initial architecture diagrams have a certain resemblance with SavaJe ones.
The OS that came to be Android started in 2003, was initially based in JavaScript, had lots of time to inspire on Java stacks after they pivoted to Java and were eventually bought by Google.
Only after SavaJe was no longer around, it became public what Google was up to regarding their mobile OS strategy.
And Android is way more a rip off of Palm than SavaJe. All of the interesting things it does (the intent system, the capability based IPC, the battery friendly process lifecycle model, etc.) clearly descend from Palm (which isn't a surprise given that's where Dianne Hackborn cut her teeth).
Google should go Kotlin way, it will be better for everybody.