The language they were shooting for feels like "C with garbage collection". The language they were actually aiming for was probably closer to "something we can easily transpile python to".
In the end, the language they got is a bit of a mess, with fairly arbitrary hyper-pedantry causing more problems than it solves.
I still use it, but so far only in the small.
Why anyone who doesn't share Google's unique issues would want to use it, though, is beyond me.
As I see it, programming is something of a craft, people have different opinions about how to do it, and the only real way to evaluate these opinions is to have a lot of experience.
Not having a great deal of experience, I like that Go essentially proscribes a lot of the stuff people normally have opinions about. It pushes you to write in a way that, for better or worse, some people think is good. I trust their understanding of the tradeoffs involved in engineering software better than mine - and I also trust that, when I outgrow them, I'll notice.