Compare two objects with a check for null

Is there a method in the JDK that compares two objects for equality, accounting for nulls? Something like this:

public static boolean equals(Object o1, Object o2)
{
    if (o1 == null)
    {
        return o2 == null; // Two nulls are considered equal
    }
    else if (o2 == null)
    {
        return false;
    }

    return o1.equals(o2);
}

It seems silly to write this method myself since I would think that it has to exist already somewhere.

Java 7.0 added a new handy class: Objects.

It has a method exactly for this: Objects.equals(Object a, Object b)

Apache Commons Lang has such a method: ObjectUtils.equals(object1, object2). You don't want generics on such a method, it will lead to bogus compilation errors, at least in general use. Equals knows very well (or should - it is part of the contract) to check the class of the object and return false, so it doesn't need any additional type safety.