No, Javascript had the huge advantage of being first; it's the only one on your list that both wasn't a plugin and was supported by IE and Netscape. And yes, modern Javascript is a better technology than any of those, although that's really damning with faint praise.
If Netscape Navigator 2 had shipped with, say, a Perl VM in addition to the Javascript VM, then I can guarantee you that everybody would've written their scripts in Perl instead of Javascript.
>That's laughable, what percentage of the web ran on Flash in 2007, 1%?
Back in the day, the only ways you could write a web app of any complexity/performance were to either use Flash or do it serverside (remember – not long ago! – when the new hot web technology was Ruby on Rails? Remember when it was PHP?). Flash was the only option if you wanted video (well, it or something truly evil like RealPlayer) or if you wanted a consistent and appealing look for your site.
Flash was on 56% of all websites as of 2010: http://www.stevesouders.com/blog/2011/04/05/http-archive-url...
Google trends for Flash vs. Javascript in the SF Bay Area: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F02p97%2C%20%2...
They all started from a similar position, JS wasn't a standard from day one, there's a reason why it's emcascript today.
> And despite being an (awful) plugin with an IDE that cost $600, Flash won in the pre-iPhone/V8 era.
That's laughable, what percentage of the web ran on Flash in 2007, 1%?