While I don't think the JVM is the savior, applets are a far cry from a good example. Applets usually cause the browser to lazy load the entire JVM as a plug-in

While I don't think the JVM is the savior, applets are a far cry from a good example. Applets usually cause the browser to lazy load the entire JVM as a plug-in, from scratch. Very little effort has been put forth to make this process fast. It's likely if the JVM was directly integrated, it would remain resident.