[zmmmmm]

This seems like a pretty big step to me: so far Go has seemed like a kind of geeky side project of Google's. But here they are promoting it into one of their production services.

Makes me wonder if they are preparing to slowly edge Java out the door and replace it with something equally performant but not burdened by a hostile owner.

[rkalla]

I think you nailed it. Consider they picked up Gosling for r&d I don't put championing their own future platform for all devices (you know Go is going to Android as part of the NDK or something by Android 4).

Isn't this what Sun basically did with Java? I don't know the incumbent they were trying to edge out or if it was just a "look at our cool tech" play.

Go seems like a C-esque version of python/ruby/java to me. A lot of very slick things in there. Lots of room to grow and a lot of community excitement.