If this were the case, then explain StandardML which is vastly superior to Java and it's relatives in every conceivable way outside of a big corporation to push it.
Even today, a large company like google would rather spend time with an inferior language like Go than work with SML.
Available libraries are another factor. C and C++ can directly call all OS functions. Java very early had an extensive runtime library supporting networking, GUI programming, multithreading, collection classes, localization, date/time, etc.
Even today, a large company like google would rather spend time with an inferior language like Go than work with SML.