There are dozens of interesting languages out there. D, for example, seems like an interesting language, and I would love to try it out in a professional project. But if I wanted to use D at work, it would probably take weeks of convincing my team to try it in production. Go already seems like a safe choice, largely because of the "seal of approval" granted to it as coming from a tech giant like Google.
(I am not talking down Dart - I think it’s underrated. But it’s a good counter example to the “it’s Google so it’s OK” logic. I suspect people say Google is the reason Go is OK even when it’s actually more word of mouth.)
1. It got the *initial push* from its Google pedigree which allowed it to gain attention and traction
2. It meets the *merit threshold* so that when people gave it a try, they wanted to continue using it
3. It had a good *product market fit*: in the world where Go was released, *a lot* of server-side software was being written in scripting languages and there was a clear value proposition for a fast, compiled, statically typed language with good tooling for handing server work.
I think that's why something like React or Typescript could really explode in that space: they could be added incrementally to a project while still keeping most things familiar.
But on the other hand, I think it is unfair to attribute Go's success solely to Google. If that was the case, where's Dart's massive success? This isn't like Swift either, where Swift is the key to modern iOS development; Go is just another option for a few types of targets.
I don't understand the unwillingness of people to accept the success of Go as being more or less natural. There's articles from entities like Digital Ocean explaining how Go naturally invaded their stacks. There's a lot of merit in Go. It being backed by Google is actually going to deter some from wanting to use it, no doubt.
Google is one of many companies that had the resources to create Go. I don't believe it was out of reach of many larger tech companies. Including Mozilla. Nobody attributes Rust's appeal or success to Mozilla, because they are comfortable pointing to its many benefits as reasons. And that is correct in my mind. But when it comes to Go, people are unwilling to admit that it is simply an appealing option with its own merits, and I think that is unfortunate.
Full disclosure: I speak as someone who works for Google now. But, I adopted Go before joining Google, back in around 2013, where it went to take over many important roles we'd otherwise had used Python or Node.JS for. I did not learn it was a Google product until later down the road.