What’s the story with Android Layouts?

I suppose the first question we ask is what were Google thinking in coming up with their own mechanism for Layout, Style and Themes. Was CSS not good enough?

I suppose like everything its a different “platform” and this requires a different set of tools. But why are you making learn a complete new language!!

What I’m not seeing a lot of is generic templates of design for Android Layouts, e.g third parties (whether it be free/paid) that provide “templates” of design.

The best I can see for now (and its not much) is googles own examples: Hello Views. Anything else much out there?