It would be more correct to say Google hired the leader of Python and he worked there for 7 years

Is there really much practical difference between that and Go? From the Ian Lance Taylor response:

> There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go

One of the first languages supported on App Engine was Python, IIRC.

Does it matter where the person worked? Python definitely was not Google’s or any other corp’s.

Google employed the primary maintainer of Python and paid him to work on it. You asked "did they have a giant corp behind them", the subtext there being that you could complete the sentence "as Go does". I'm merely pointing out that your example of Python is strikingly similar to Guido Van Rossum working at Google while he was BDFL of Python

Of course it matters. That's the whole reason the Go Is Google's Language post exists. And the whole reason the response exists, and this very comment thread, too.

Absolutely not. It is one thing to create a language and maontain it and another to hire someone who created a language some years ago.

from the post:

> There was no mandate or suggestion from Google management or executives that Google should develop a programming language. For many years, including well after the open source release, I doubt any Google executives had more than a vague awareness of the existence of Go

That is a ver very strong assumption. Just because Google did not explicitly have a ‘GO’ team does not mean they did not support it. I assume Google became aware of it the moment their employees started using it for something useful. People have bosses who have bosses. At whoch point they decided to let their employees continue working on it.

Go exists because Rob Pike, Ken Thompson and others are allowed the latitude to make it.

You can be sure that whatever they do gets a high profile without it in any way being "supported" or "official"