Java might appear to be more successful than the (2001) article suggests, but it is geared towards java "the language." Its not a great language, but has found itself at the right place at the right time to address certain technical concerns (a "better" C++ at a time alternatives were being sought, concurrency with the rise of multi-core processing).

Java "the platform" (the JVM) has been a bigger focus in recent days especially with additional language support (JRuby, Jython, Clojure, Groovy, Scala). This support has been expanded in each recent release and seems to be the basis for the majority of the articles that appear on HN (or at least that I notice).