Now Oracle is doing the same, somewhat. Of course, it isn't dropping the ball on Java entirely but it is announcing the inevitable and probably demise of the Java web browser plugin.

Java’s rapid rise to fame 20 years ago began with a tumbling duke applet running in the HotJava browser, long before Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome were released.

Oracle said it would remove browser plug-in support from the JDK and the Java Run Time Environment (JRE) in an unspecified future release.