Was at Google in 2007 when the launch(es) were happening. The commenter at the bottom of the article is correct, the existential threat Google faced wasn't from Apple, it was from US mobile carriers. Google wanted leverage over the carriers to bring Google products to feature phones more easily. They had no intention of actually releasing Android at the time, and it wasn't close to being ready for release anyway. Apple then released iPhone and beat Google to the punch, and I remember us all thinking "oh shit this is WAY better than the janky, blackberry-esque prototypes we have in development"[1]. So everyone at Google scrambled to get something out the door in response, and the compromise was the HTC G1/Dream on the cheapest carrier at the time (T-mobile). I was using a Nokia N95 at the time, and while the Dream was laughably bad, I did appreciate the bits of the Dream which compared favorably, like mobile web browsing and application development. I still feel Android is mostly a reactive product with many clumsy holdovers from v1, but I digress.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/HT...