What Google looked into licensing was considerably broader than the APIs, and included material that everyone agrees is copyrightable.

We don't learn anything from the fact that Google negotiated for a broad licence, decided not to take one, and used a clone which copies only the API definitions.

If API definitions aren't copyrightable then Google didn't do anything wrong. If they are then it did.

The idea that API definitions may not be copyrightable certainly isn't a wild theory that Google made up for this instance.