[barrybe]

Go might have had less marketing than Java, but it still had a decent amount of support. There were several high quality promotional videos when it was first released. The web page is really full-featured; it has a ton of documentation, including translations for several languages. And all those appearances at tech conferences take time & money (and I'm sure that Google sponsorship helped to secure some of them).

All that stuff adds up in terms of manpower and budget, and it's out of reach of what a small independent team can do. It's not all about technical merit.

[luriel]

> There were several high quality promotional videos when it was first released.

There was video of a talk given by Rob, and a short video intro by Russ Cox. That was pretty much it.

> it has a ton of documentation, including translations for several languages.

The documentation is a fundamental part of the language, mostly the spec and godocs. The translations are all contributed by volunteers.

> And all those appearances at tech conferences take time & money

Most conferences actually cover expenses for speakers, and there have been just a handful of talks given by Google folks about Go.