> "Aimed to counter Microsoft’s .NET framework"
First of all the alliace came to be during the 1996 - 2001 timeframe that predated .NET.
When Network Computer came out there was no .NET.
When Oracle adopted Java into their database ecosystem there was no .NET.
When IBM refocused from Smalltalk into Java, there was no .NET.
Secondly, .NET was only born with C#, after Sun's lawsuit due to J++ language extensions (J/Direct reborn as P/Invoke, COM interop, WFC reborn as Windows Forms, events).
Had it not been for the lawsuit, the updated COM Runtime being researched would have most likely used J++, as shown on the Ext-VOS paper.
Also 20 years later, Microsfot saw they had to embrace Java on Azure, and they are now an OpenJDK contributor with their own distribution, talk about strange ironies.