I think they mainly chose it because it's what the community wanted. Git is very popular with Rubyists, and Pythonistas like to be a bit different than Rubyists. Instead, they chose hg, which is essentially git, with different names for things. Hg is a perfect fit for Python, as thats about how different Python is from Ruby or vice-versa ;)
They do mention: "We are pragmatic enough to not choose a tool simply because it is written in Python, but we do see the usefulness in promoting tools that do use it when it is reasonable to do so as it is in this case."
The summary: "First, git's Windows support is the weakest out of the three DVCSs being considered which is unacceptable as Python needs to support development on any platform it runs on. Since Python runs on Windows and some people do develop on the platform it needs solid support. And while git's support is improving, as of this moment it is the weakest by a large enough margin to warrant considering it a problem.
Second, and just as important as the first issue, is that the Python core developers liked git the least out of the three DVCS options by a wide margin."
I'm using Mercurial for the same reason - Windows support without complex dependencies.
Some of the Windows information on Git from this article is outdated. I use TortoiseGit on Windows regularly. It handles all the common cases for me very well. For the uncommon cases, it comes packaged with Bash for Windows, so I can use Git easily from the command line as well.
My first ever DVCS was Mercurial, using it on both Windows and Mac. I recently (last two months or so) switched to git, to try it, and due to what seemed to me overwhelming use for the projects I saw across the web.
But, git felt weird. I don't know how to explain it other than that, but reading Python's decision to go with Mercurial just seemed to reinforce that to me. So I've switched back.
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Second, and just as important as the first issue, is that the Python core developers liked git the least out of the three DVCS options by a wide margin."
I'm using Mercurial for the same reason - Windows support without complex dependencies.
But, git felt weird. I don't know how to explain it other than that, but reading Python's decision to go with Mercurial just seemed to reinforce that to me. So I've switched back.