I chose to ignore Go initially because I thought it'd be yet another soon-to-be-abandoned Google project and because I felt that a programming language created by a large (unfocused) corporation doesn't have the best chances to develop in the direction I'd like (yes, I know how C started...).

What got me interested in the end was a) well-known (to me anyway) developers using Go and writing about it, b) the purported ease of learning, simplicity, standardized formatting and resulting "fun", c) concurrency features (lacking in many older languages).

Conclusion: it actually works to look at the needs / interests of influential developers and create something that fits for them. As far as Erlang is concerned, I believe too many of them have been put off by the syntax. Or it mostly attracts people who do not talk about it much, for some obscure reason.