Hurd is based on the Mach microkernel which happens to be the same microkernel that OS X uses, so I think it's fair to say that microkernels are here, working and aren't 'stinking slow'.

There are only 9 countries in the world where you can actually buy apps on android market OR develop an application and actually sell it!
Which means the app store really has no competition in 100+ countries for games and quality applictions. Google doesn't really seem to care about most of the world.

Austria
France
Germany
Italy
Japan
Netherlands
Spain
United Kingdom
United States

http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=143779

This really has nothing to do with Java (the language, library or tooling) other than Google not wanting to use Java ME for obivious reasons (licencing and lacking features).
So Google sees Java SE as the only choice, but Java SE contains too much library code without use to their platform (Windowing toolkits for example). But cutting that out from their Java SE implementation and creating a subset of the Java API means they can't use Sun/Oracles JDK and they can't call it Java. So they go with Apache Harmony (which isn't officially Java, since they haven't been able to run the Technology Compatibility Kit (TCK) as Apache doesn't want to pay money, nor is based on OpenJDK).
Now the next thing Google needs to replace is the JVM for both technical (optimize for embedded hardware) and to not be a Java platform. Enter the Dalvik VM which runs its own bytecode and is not based on Hotspot.

The result, Java ME is dead by Google's hands, Sun got pissed but didn't want to cause havok to the Java community and didn't do anything, despite losing their cash cow. Oracle doesn't really care about that and chooses to sue, but Google obviously have tried very hard to publicly state that Android + Dalvik isn't Java, so Oracle can't really do anything there. The only thing left to do is patent infringement for the patents they got on techniques in the JVM, which means that it's not limited to a Java VM. Sure they could say Google only did this to get around paying money to use the JVM and Java platform but still use Java the language (which the obviously did).

No, it would be the same as Oracle trying to sue Microsoft over the CLR.

The young developers have move up one level of abstraction, the platform these days are one level higher it used to be. People have move up with it, the same way as people moved from working with their own hardware, wrote their own software for the hardware, wrote their own drivers, etc.
People are now developing applications or applications inside applications (web apps in particular). OS-level development is considered as low-level as writing your own application that ran directly on the hardware without an OS.

Better yet, a network of swallows flying around the globe with different colored cloth, or perhaps even text messages!

And obviously the reduction in quality by encoding the clip again

Except with user uploaded material where the user either have no clue about multiple formats or is using tools that don't support the multiple browser friendly formats.
I foresee a future of IE only videos.

Nice to be the test pilot. "Increase the speed to mach 6, we're just gonna check that the engines don't disintegrate."