[nikdaheratik]

1. My beginners class in Uni taught Java for the 101/102 sequence, so as far as that goes you can use it to implement most beginners projects just fine. It even compiles to something if you want to deal with that experience.

2. I'd say the set of programs can be pretty sparse in that it doesn't tend to play well with its native computer environments (partially be design), so it's more work to generate stuff with a GUI, somewhat more work to handle CLI programs (but not that much more), and it has an interesting set of web tools that have hopefully been updated in the 8+ years since I played with them.

3. I have no idea what Google is doing, but it doesn't matter as Java will live a very long life in Enterprise land if nothing else.