I don’t think the $500 million marketing budget would’ve worked if Java was introduced at a time other than the 90s.

The 80s would’ve been too early. It would just turn into a parenthesis in programming language history (next to smalltalk). The 00s would’ve been too late. It would’ve missed the dotcom bubble boat. Java came in the right time to become a dominant programming language.

I’m not saying the marketing didn’t have any influence. It probably had an big influence in which OOP language was selected for computer science education.