I think the creator of Go had this to say about it:
The key point here is that our programmers are not researchers. They are, as a rule, very young, they come to us after their studies, perhaps they studied Java, C / C ++ or Python. They can’t understand an outstanding language, but at the same time we want them to create good software. That is why their language should be easy for them to understand and learn.
It should be familiar, roughly similar to C. Programmers working at Google start their careers early and are mostly familiar with procedural languages, in particular the C family. The demand for speedy productivity in a new programming language means that the language doesn’t have to be too radical.
I still don’t see how golang helps make good software, I keep running into crashes with go programs and libraries… >.>