> One key feature is that the Go compiler itself is the style guide

Unless something changed in the last six months that's not the case, there is a tool called gofmt that will do the reformatting if you call it.

I'm not really sure I see publishing a style guideline in the form of code rather than english text makes any difference, at least it didn't make it for my go code.

I suspect it has more to do with the fact that some of the developers behind go use acme than anything else.