Well, I guess we diverge in our views (besides affection for Go) in that I see the adoption of Go for Docker (init release 2013) & K8S (2015) as merit based choices. Go was made public in 2009.
> Programming languages are products, and get used because of the eco-systems they carry along, bullet point features are usually secondary to that.
K8S was initially developed in Java, the decision to switch to Go came later and they are still fighting the language, including having to maintain their own generics workaround.
It's absolutely relevant to the point that "we wouldn't keep using it if it wasn't an effective language" (modulo any disagreements about what "effective" means!). Many languages are heavily used due to network effects (popularity, marketing, community) and platform effects, not solely on technical merit. JavaScript and C come immediately to mind as examples of the platform effect on language selection. (The fact that modern JS transpilers exist merely papers over JS' dominant footing in the Web space.)
I maintain that it is a non-sequitur, if not patronizing, to state the obvious facts about software language eco-systems. My perception remains that Go sufficiently delighted a critical mass of developers who then proceeded to create the said eco-system. Mere marketing can not engender a vibrant community.
Please see my first post in this thread. As mentioned, I do agree that sans Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and the Google host, the language would have likely languished in semi-obscurity. But if it was an entirely flea ridden dog, no amount of marketing would have afforded it the mind share that it possesses.
Yeah I could have omitted that line, but I do still think there's truth in it. If it weren't from a large company writing a ton of tooling in it (Kubernetes in particular), I think adoption would be significantly lower. It would be nonzero, and I don't mean to suggest it would be zero, but it would not be in the "top popularity class" in my opinion were it to not have that marketing arm behind it. I also think it's more optimized to Google's developers (read: huge army of disparate technical levels) than small/medium or even some larger shops. It's great that Kubernetes can be written in it, and that's a point in favor of it. But that doesn't make it a great language.
What marketing? The only time I hear that is about people mad at Go being popular and not liking it, I've never seen marketing from Google toward Go. The language is popular because it's powerful and yet very simple to onboard, the standard lib is good as well as the documentation, that's why it's popular not because of Google.
You mention Kubernetes, but forgot all the other widely used projects that are not from Google: Docker, Grafana, etcd, all the Hashicorp tools ( terraform, packer, consul .. ), Prometheus, InfluxDB, Hugo, CockroachDB ect ...
This is only true in part. The fact is that Go is a supremely accessible language (warts and all) that helps you get things done.