Lets take WebAssembly as an example. It's only reason for existence is convention. You need everyone to agree on an IR that is not only cross platform and stable but also low level and allows execution of untrusted code within a sandbox.
If you look at competitors then it becomes obvious that they are not following these core principles. LLVM IR just isn't meant to be used in a browser. JVM bytecode just wasn't meant to be used in a browser. So what are we going to do? Use them anyway? That's how you get situations like the horribly insecure JVM plugin. You can restrict the JVM plugin to a subset that is secure enough for browsers and add additional opcodes for low level behaviors but then you are no longer using JVM bytecode. It's a completely new invention at that point but Oracle will still hunt you down.