Oracle deprecates the Java browser plugin, prepares for its demise

The much-maligned Java browser plugin, source of so many security flaws over the years, is to be killed off by Oracle. It will not be mourned.

Oracle, which acquired Java as part of its 2010 purchase of Sun Microsystems, has announced that the plugin will be deprecated in the next release of Java, version 9, which is currently available as an early access beta. A future release will remove it entirely.

Of course, Oracle's move is arguably a day late and a dollar short. Chrome started deprecating browser plugins last April, with Firefox announcing similar plans in October. Microsoft's new Edge browser also lacks any support for plugins. Taken together, it doesn't really matter much what Oracle does: even if the company continued developing and supporting its plugin, the browser vendors themselves were making it an irrelevance. Only Internet Explorer 11, itself a legacy browser that's receiving only security fixes, is set to offer any continued plugin support.

Nonetheless, the deprecation will inevitably upset large corporations and governments who have ignored the writing that is so clearly on the wall and continued to insist that their employees use Java applets hosted within the browser. Oracle has some advice on how to best migrate away from the plugin for these organizations.