Google is looking to offer a native Terminal app for Android, possibly with Android 16. The Terminal app will allow installation of a Linux VM with full GUI and GPU acceleration along with other sysadmin features including disk resizing, port forwarding, and partition recovery. This is an extension of Google's earlier project of allowing Chrome OS to run on Android using the Android Virtualization Framework.
They might be concerned about future competition with a looming potential breakup of the company by the US DOJ (not that it would necessarily weaken Android itself but it seems plausible). But it could also just be because one of the devs wanted to do it, which is pretty typical with Google (for better and for worse).
I think the days of the devs being large and in charge at Google are mostly over. Bean counters have been running the company for several years.