The Atlantic has an excerpt from ‘Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution’ by Fred Vogelstein. The Verge sums up:

Already in intensive development for two years by 2007, Android was Google's vision for a mobile operating system of the future. Still, in spite of all the work that had already gone into it, the Mountain View company was sure it couldn't carry on along the trajectory it'd been following — the earliest Android devices looked very much like Googlified BlackBerrys — and had to alter its plans to compete with the iPhone's new touch-centric interface. A book excerpt in The Atlantic cites Andy Rubin, who led the early development of Android, as saying "I guess we’re not going to ship that phone," in reference to the Sooner project Google was initially planning to reveal to the world.

Finally, the hypocrisy can stop. Google did follow Apple. At least, they realized it was the right path.