Go runtime is included in the executable. C or C++ do not automatically do that when writing a simple "hello world" and compiling it into an executable. stdio isn't statically linked by default.

And when rid of debugging symbols, even when importing the fmt package :

    package main

    import "fmt"

    func main() {
        fmt.Print("Hello World")
    }

go build -ldflags "-s -w" hello.go

is 1.3MB .