> companies using the language with hopes of being acquired by them
This is beyond belief. What companies are using Go with the hopes of being acquired by Google? Does anyone honestly believe that Google's acquisitions teams know or care about programming languages? Any business that acquires companies on that basis is doomed to failure, as is any company that hopes to be acquired on that basis.
Had Go been released at AT&T and it would have shared the same fate as Limbo.