> The Unix operating system was first presented formally to the outside world at the 1973 Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, where Ritchie and Thompson delivered a paper. This led to requests for the system, but under a 1956 consent decree in settlement of an antitrust case, the Bell System (the parent organization of Bell Labs) was forbidden from entering any business other than "common carrier communications services", and was required to license any patents it had upon request.[6] Unix could not, therefore, be turned into a product. Bell Labs instead shipped the system for the cost of media and shipping.[6] Ken Thompson quietly began answering requests by shipping out tapes and disks, each accompanied by – according to legend – a note signed, "Love, Ken”

Looks like marketing actions to me.

Which technically makes your claim true. But if you define marketing that broadly, it also makes your claim completely uninteresting. It boils down to "Things that are developed in house, and never talked about to anyone outside, and never shipped to anyone outside, do not take over the outside world". That's true, but it's trivially uninteresting.

You seem to be much more focused on the technical definition of marketing than on the very real differences between the "marketing" of C and UNIX vs. that of, say, Java.

And back to the original point: The marketing of Go has been much closer to the "marketing" of C than to the slick sales job of Java.

Word of mouth, being associated with idols are doing, feeling part of a community, feeling part of a counter culture, are all tools of the trade.

Which would not have taken place if those Google dollars weren't coming into Go's team salaries, conference talks, books and blog posts.