While there may be some intercorporate chicanery going on, I think that the "blame Andy Rubin" explanation makes the most sense.<p>The original Sidekick team designed Android originally before being bought by Google, and their intensely odd ideas show up all over the place in the product:<p><pre><code>  * It makes really poor use of the Linux kernel, basically using it as a bootloader,
    hardcoding random shit, implementing its own power management by exposing a few
    low-level hardware-specific bits directly to their JVM
  
  * Bizarro JIT-less register-based alt-JVM. Aren't native apps supposed to be faster
    than web apps? WTF did they spend effort writing V8 when Squirrelfish was doing
    great, and then not bother about performance for the part that makes phone calls?
    
  * Odd decomposed 'Activity' model for applications
  
  * No house style or easy defaults for basic shit like buttons and forms
  
  * Huge holes in the API, sound is fucked to the point where you can't do decent
    games, much less the kind of musical apps you see on the iPhone
  
  * Hidden functionality via long-touches and double-clicks everywhere
  
  * 5 hardware buttons in different orders on random phones
    with different functionality in every app (back is completely fucked!)
</code></pre>
Multitouch gestures in the default apps are just one of the lesser oddities.