Wow, seriously?! I hadn't heard that, but that's retarded.
Oh yeah that was like 2 years ago but that stipulation was not enforced until recently. You'll notice that Windows Update no longer has Java Virtual Machine (which was Microsoft's version). Actually if I recall and it is still there if you google Java Virtual Machine or search Microsoft for it there is text to that extent.
Yeah here ya go. The Microsoft explanation
http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/java/I had several people tell me that they didn't see anything in the tickers I have running and Java stuff gave them errors. I had to put up a banner for everyone to go download it. FireFox will usually tell you to go get a new version of Java. IE7 of course didn't come with Java either.