Because they could want to offer WiFi Aware in the EU and AWDL anywhere else, even in the long term. And switch back to AWDL everywhere if the EU stops mandating interoperability some day in the future.

I’ll bet $100 that AWDL is better designed and will work better. It isn’t like Google didn’t have all the time and chances to do this right. Android beam worked 50% of the time. IIRC half of the failures were BT and half were WiFi. Airdrop is much more reliable than 50%