Go's New Brand
blog.golang.org
blog.golang.org
And its not that the designs here are bad in isolation; overall the visual identity is very sleek, and I could imagine it working well for something else; RedHat and JetBrains are the first things that come to mind. But for Go, this logo is the one that I acknowledge:
https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png
Funny thing here is that I'm don't even like Go that much, and still I had such strong negative reaction to this branding.
this sums up why this new brand isn't good.
There's nothing special about the Apple logo (or Apple as the name of a corporate name), for example. I mean, seriously, it's a clip art apple with a bit out of it.
What makes it a great logo is everything in your head and heart that is associated, good or bad, with that image.
I liked the simple, basic site that Go has always used. It seems inevitable that they'll redo the site, to include megabytes of JavaScript for features that nobody wants, like hijacked scrolling. (The site[0] for the design agency they talk about loads about 3 MB. Almost none of it is images. The site loads all that to display approximately ten words.)
Also,
>The circular shape of the letters hints at the eyes of the Go gopher, creating a familiar shape and allowing the mark and the mascot to pair well together.
If by "pairing well together", you mean not going together in any way, then yes.
[0]: http://within.us/
It's like they tried to tick every box in the "obnoxious and annoying" category:
* It's inexplicably large
* It's slow af
* Scroll hijacking
* back button hijacking
* There's elements that appear when I scroll, but they disappear so you don't actually appear to be able to look them any more than in passing. (Notably the colourful logos for Google and Priceline).
* Did I mention it's slow? Scrolling is slow. Clicking on things is slow. Animations are slow.
* ~Half the code isn't even minified and a coworker pointed out that some of it doesn't appear to even be used.~ Nevermind, some of it does appear to be minified/resized.
* 3.8+ Megabytes of JS, really? Really really? Why?
I think this happens when I drag one direction, then change my mind and drag the other, and the site (sorry, "app") forgets to forget my previous drag.
You're not missing that much, though, since there are quite literally (yes, I counted) fifteen words on the entire home page.
So true. When I look at the new logo, it reminds me of Adidas in the 1980s.
but Adidas had plenty of soul in the 80s. RunDMC wrote an anthem specifically about the brand [0], which completely changed the Hip Hop's relationship w/ commerce.
As someone who uses Go everyday -- professionally and personally -- Go's branding was always simple and fun, which (to me) was reflected in the language itself. The new proposal is trendy, but Go was never about being trendy -- Go as a language explicitly rejects so many trendy features from other languages. Go to me is simple, fast, fun, and doesn't change a whole lot (a very good thing).
Most of the Gophers I know, myself included, are a little weird and different -- in a good way. So was the branding. I liked that... and I'm going to miss that.
It's like Duke and Java -- Duke still exists as a mascot. I suspect the gopher will be around for a long time to come. If anything this is a harbinger of Go becoming more mainstream than it is already (think TIOBE top-10).
There is no way self respecting Googlers were involved in this shit show.
> https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png
Check the link again. They pulled the rug out from under you.
Yes, I was expecting the gopher, especially because of the URL's path including the word gopher. Looking at the wayback machine shows you're right, this is the same picture that's been at that URL for years. I just always thought of the gopher as their logo, didn't realize there was another logo they used (I don't use Go so not too familiar with it).
the logo is the opposite of timeless, trying to grasp currently oh so hip and pop retro aesthetic
- it ham-fistedly plays on the name Go (look, the logo is "going"...)
- it is not opinionated (it conforms seamlessly to contemporary corporate logo design, it looks like stock art)
- it does not repay sustained attention
Go is a brutalist language. Clean lines, no frills, lots of power, close enough to the metal. I want monotype, exposed beams and concrete, RTFM, no ugly movement lines.
I would actually rather they had taken a photo of the word "Go" written in concrete.
And honestly, I don't care about any of these things, it's just window dressing on a very solid programming tool. It's frustrating when the miss is that obvious, though. Whoever pushed this through was clearly very risk averse, rushed, or both.
EDIT: Here [2] are the two logos side by side. The number of similarities would make this one hell of a coincidence.
movement lines aren’t original. they’re a classic visual archetype, commonly used to convey movement in static images. they exist in every comic book ever printed.
Sans-serif fonts in all caps consisting of two circular letters “G”and “O” can look similar, depending on who’s looking
no car
That is unfortunate phrasing. The Jordan, Jesse, Go logo has been used for roughly a decade and the podcast is older than the Go language. There is only one possible direction that any inspiration could have flowed.
Any one or two of these specific details can be explained away, but at a certain point the number of coincidence start to indicate that they are not in fact coincidences.
But there is not enough evidence here, to suggest that the new go logo lifted elements from that other logo.
Motion lines are not a coincidence they are a common solution to the problem of conveying motion in static imagery. It’s as common as using a cup when the problem being addressed is how to drink coffee.
A sans-serif word-mark is also not unique. It’s trendy. Everyone’s doing it. The major difference between the old google logo and the current one was the removal of serifs. For a company Google’s size that’s one expensive redesign just to remove serifs, since they had to get it re-printed on everything such as cars, signs, business cards, letterhead, clothing, etc. Going with a sans-serif is not an original design choice, it’s a trendy and safe one. And sans serif texts tend to look like each other in all caps with circular letters.
Ehh. I’m trying but I’m not seeing any peculiar elements that the two logos share, including the combination of public domain design choices, to the extent that would suggest one lifted from the other.
In fact, a font that looked like steel or concrete might be good. Wonder if there is one. If so, they could have made the logo to be just the word Go (as I spelled it as regards to case) in that font. Silvery steel font on a gray or black background, or some similar combination.
Even a font / image / logo signifying a rugged wood (mahogany or some hardwood?) in some way might have been a good one. Signifying the Go philosophy - a no-frills, just-get-the-work done-kind of language.
Just thinking aloud ... :)
Nice, thanks.
"old" logo (easily recognizable as a medical institution, easily discernible "H" for "Helios"):
http://www.medical-network-hessen.de/images/News/Helios_Klin...
"new" logo ("H" not clearly discernable in the two green blobs, no reference to medicine at all):
https://www.helios-gesundheit.de/fileadmin/_processed_/d/4/c...
All in all, from quite good to meh.
I've never seen either of these logos before, but in the new one I immediately see the "H" formed by the white space between the two "green blobs", which to me look like "healing hands" and which I take as a medical reference (although TBH they do make me think "chiropractor" rather than "doctor"). I don't think the new one is great, but I much prefer it to the old one, which looks like a very half-assed attempt to combine an H with the Rod of Asclepius. It's like they weren't even trying.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang-nuts/JZ-gUROf...
Another example is Google's current logo of the company name. I don't find it attractive - flat and sort of dull. But the one they had earlier for a long time, was attractive, the colors sort of seemed to gleam or sparkle, and the overall effect was pleasing, even though the colors were the sort of primary colors you find in the kindergarten.
Note: All this said just as a guy who has no UI design expertise at all, just speaking as a layman to that field.
1. Branding is hard: everybody things they can do it. Creative direction and art direction are really, really hard. If you haven't seen the "Make my logo bigger cream" video, go watch it, and then have some grace with the Go team. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgcX0y1Nzhs
2. A brand is WAY more than a logo. I get that's the first thing you grab, but the logo is just the identify of the brand. If you think it's all creative mumbo jumbo, I encourage you to go read Aaker's "Building Strong Brands" https://www.amazon.com/Building-Strong-Brands-David-Aaker/dp...
Go read the Brand Guide twice before you start throwing darts. https://storage.googleapis.com/golang-assets/go-brand-book-v...
Having seen 100s of these over the years, this is excellent work from people who honestly care. It also addresses almost every single negative comment on this thread.
I also like how they call out explicitely "The gopher is not a logo" which is entirely true. I think it's more of a "lovemark" (see https://www.amazon.com/Lovemarks-Kevin-Roberts/dp/157687270X)
It's not my favorite logo, but it's definitely on brand.
If the go team is reading this: it might help if you lead with the mark and the mascot together. I think the logo in isolation is what's generating the strong reaction.
I'd suggest that a re-brand that didn't provoke a strong reaction was a waste of time.
I thought it was super-interesting they used the word 'brand' instead of 'branding'.
As if a brand ("what people say about you when you're not listening") could be conjured from a logo and set of colours.
> Roboto is a contemporary sans serif typeface designed for readability.
That's an oxymoron: "sans serif typeface designed for readability".
Thin sans serif body text is how you show you hate your reader's eyes.
And they didn't even run a damn spell-checker over the thing:
> For additional background and guideance (sic)
(Points for using the correct word "typeface" in lieu of "font" tho. Are you watching Woz!?)
And, since you went there first: "lieu".
That's classic: I'm scolding the other fellow for not looking where he's going and I walk into a pole myself. Heh.
but... I'm a rando posting in anger. They're a brand company that just released a thing for Google with a typo in the "Brand Guide". (It's in the PDF, is it in the hardcopy? I'd be mortified if this was my project.)
I don't really have a response for your point about screen reading.
Muphry's Law :)
And I do believe this rebrand is a miss. Nothing about it communicates Go's unique personality. Or deep tradition.
Compare to the incomparable Paula Scher's work at Pentagram. I'll single out the rebrand for MIT Media Lab. About as good as it gets. Mapping perfectly to the myriad bespoke research programs in everything from "affective computing" to "soft robots":
https://www.pentagram.com/work/mit-media-lab/story
In any event, I love that this turned into such a lively discussion here. We should have more of these live critiques. The value of this kind of feedback is amazing ;)
They are satirising how clients tend to destroy good designs with bad feedback.
The problem is all in communication:
1. Communicating the requirements with enough clarity to enable the designer to translate those requirements into creative.
2. Communicating constructive feedback to adjust the creative.
The most productive exchanges are when the client understands the creative process.
Branding isn't hard; forcing a constructed brand is hard. That's the real source of friction here.
A brand might be way more than a logo, but THIS brand is not. That logo is literally the only thing this design agency contributed at all. Even the colors were already in use around the project. If the difference between "a brand" and "a logo" is "ten pages of marketspeak" then I'm even less convinced that branding is hard.
I read the "brand guide." It's exactly what I expect from a professional design firm: meaningless noise, carefully typeset. The entirety of section 1 is a PR quickref chart, of no interest or use to anyone but project managers dealing with micromanaging executives. Section 2.0 is breathless pseudo-art crap and some trademark defense. 2.1 contains pointless backstory for fonts that are firmly in the "Google already had lying around" category. Finally, the cartoon gets its own section, expressly to head off the whining from the old guard.
I've also seen a ton of this crap over the years, and none of it has ever made the slightest bit of difference. This is exactly the kind of time-and-money-wasting that occurs when some facet of management has gone off the rails. Let's hope the derelict in question is somewhere in marketing, and unable to affect the quality of the actual technology in question.
As for the actual logo, I don't have an opinion about it. I don't think there's anything there to have an opinion about. I've never been a big fan of the gopher cartoon, but at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.
Let's agree to disagree. I've been involved in dozens of branding processes. None of them were easy, from the strategy to the creative to the execution.
If the agency did their job, the brand guide _should_ feel obvious. That's how you know it's on brand.
<rant>I find this sort of comment very condescending to designers. I'n not a designer, but I've managed them. Good design is hard. Good creative is hard. Good branding is hard. This was excellent work, and if you see "marketspeak" you need to re-evaluate what good creative work looks like.</rant>
It's like "artist's statements" that are written so impenetrably that it's impossible for anyone to understand what the artist actually meant to do with the artwork. And that's deliberate, because of where the art world has got now.
If the designers of this shitshow were honest in their statement then it'd be "we made it look like this because it was the easiest and simplest method of getting it past the mass of middle-managers who got to veto the creative without contributing any positive ideas themselves. The brief was to be as inoffensive and non-controversial as possible".
As another commenter said, Go is brutalist. The gopher never quite suited it. But at least it was fun and original and different. But this... this is shite.
It's not helping the discussion to disregard an entire profession. Re-read what you wrote; it is _extremely_ heavily biased, angry venting at some corporate construct you've invented.
> at least it had some character, which likely comes from the talent of a real artist.
This is just mean.
I am familiar with what I wrote: I wrote it. I'm not biased against anything; my opinions come from direct experience with dozens of design firms over many years. In-house design teams are, for example, a totally different and more positive approach. Every time you farm the job out you get junk, and this example is no exception. I'm baffled as to why this got farmed out at all -- is there no design team within Google qualified to typeset a two-letter logo based on an existing logo?
As for being "just mean," to whom am I being mean? The faceless entities who picked six colors and three corporate-approved fonts and then wrote a twenty-page document inventing reasons they did the obvious? Guilty as charged, I guess.
One thing I'll add is that one of the reasons why branding is hard is because there is often a surprisingly large disconnect between how users perceive a brand/product, and how the creators perceive it.
My favourite approach to coming up with a brand structure is to go through archetypes with both the client and a subset of users. Archetypes are a great way to get the initial planning of brand perception down, but a lot of designers will do it purely with the client. Nearly every time I've had the fortune to work at an agency that does it for both sides, the perception of the brand has been very different.
I think the agency have done a good job, but I do wonder whether they took the time to see how users perceive the Go language. Based on the comments on here, my guess is that they didn't.
In the case of Go I think both the branding and the logo are a mistake, objectively speaking.
I get that in the briefing they conveyed to the designers the idea that Go is a fun programming language, but both the client and the designers completely ignored the target audience. Developers, specially Go developers, care about reliability, performance, convenience, stability, etc. None of these characteristics is expressed in the brand other than "fun" above anything else.
Subjectively speaking I have a strong reaction against the brand. I'd rather have the old ugly gopher than this which I can't identify or empathize with in any way.
This is something that really irritates me about Google and their products, services, "stuff" if you will. Their branding is contemporary but at the same time has absolutely no excitement or personality to it. I mean, it's till contemporary, it still uses interesting colors and stuff, but they strip away all personality from everything that they do in the interest of appealing to a worldwide audience.
Whatever, joke's on them, I'm going to vehemently deny that this new brand exists. I'm not going to let a branding agency ruin things for me.
The agency page for their work on Go features an updated gopher graphic, and I think the home page looks quite nice. The branding booklet looks like standard agency stuff, but if they were to use the gopher a bit more I could get behind it.
I found it agreeable, woody, complex and balanced, with notes of ash and clover.
Presumably the Go design team added the speed lines at the left to connote speed, performance, and and the future progress and adoption of the language. But the way the lines are conceived is generic. The variation of lengths, meant to evoke the chaotic air turbulence behind a rapidly accelerating race car, is tired. Nothing we haven't seen millions of times before. And not particularly well thought out. In direct contradiction to the expressive power and beauty of the language itself.
The best thing about the design is of course the hidden encapsulation of the mathematical symbol for "infinity". Although, again I find myself at a loss to understand the exact nature of the relation. A possible reference to the ability to spawn millions of goroutines?
The execution of the infinity symbol itself is muddled by the sharp corners of the G's aperture. Shouldn't it be more rounded? It's menacing resemblance to a PC-era on/off power symbol rotated 90 degrees counter-clockwise is distracting.
And lastly, the most troubling of all. Whither the beloved Gopher? A clear nod to the linux penguin. And a secret totem to those who have been initiated. A hieroglyph for the high priests. No text necessary.
Make no doubt about what this rebranding portends. Enterprise Go, Team Edition coming soon ;)
That's... looking into it quite a lot, isn't it? It seems like just a playful mascot.
Well Go doesn’t particularly excel in the expressiveness department, so in that sense I guess this new logo is fitting?
This logo looks aimed at suits and not the Go community. That might not be a bad thing for Go jobs and for Google. Open source communities often have puns in naming or plushy worthy logos and just generally playfulness which I don't see in this logo.
Golang not well supporting supervision trees has more to do with the runtime not allowing to kill a goroutine. See http://www.jerf.org/iri/post/2930
Java 1.4 already had much more features and library offerings than Go still lacks.
I'd consider languages like JavaScript, Ruby, and Python to be playful languages by comparison.
This looks like they hired an external team of wan#&$%, pardon the term, but humour me for a second: the brand guide pdf:
- ven diagram, check
- big wanky words, check
- big wanky opposite words, check
- proxy terms that are samey to any brand they'd do, check
This could have been delivered on April 1st.
Even java kept coffee cup and duke.
If there's one crime against UI and design that stands far above the others, it's Java's GUI framework.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Duke_%28...
I'm partial to this take on the little fella: http://reneefrench.blogspot.com/2016/11/blog-post.html
Languages do need to develop a critical mass of resources related to them, people need to provide services for them, and you do want to identify which ones are official. For that purpose, a brand identity is going to be helpful. (At least as helpful as a brand can be.)
In a nutshell, it's about ensuring people can distinguish between golang.org and w3schools.com.
In fact there are old comments on HN from '05 when people lamented the loss of the old logo..
http://www.demiurgo.org/charlas/python-unittesting/img/pytho...
Now, we can say this is superficial bullshit, but at the end of the day, the way you dress influence people's perception of you.
So in my opinion, Go's new branding give it a more "serious" image and perhaps people unfamiliar with the language will be more inclined to consider it.
Again, it's superficial bullshit, but it is what it is.
Then why is the mascot not featured in the post even once?
Personally, I have a big soft spot in my heart for the go fonts . Whenever I feel like coding like it's 1979 again, I load them up in my editor and pretend I'm looking at well written documentation from my childhood.
[edit: Yay, Go fonts remain for source code display!]
I was a little late for 1979, but I still enjoy the aesthetic.
edit: I've been using Iosevka for a while now— which I guess a mildly similar feel, but narrower.
I love C and Lua, and both are untrendy, long-lasting languages that don't attract particular crowds, and it means that when I produce something with them, unlike the trendier side of software development, it will actually last and run 5 years from now.
I think branding like this is a double edged sword. It says, "We're trendy and attractive, but established," and at the same time it says, "We guarantee you're going to love our mascot plushies and the high quality $15 decal stickers you're going to slap on your $1,299 MacBook Pro that you just got back from the Apple Store over a stuck key repair."
Now, I do not endorse a complete neglect for cohesiveness and consistency. In the case of Go, it has an interesting interplay between sophistication and fun - this was a perfect opportunity to make an xkcd style cartoony brand that conveyed both simultaneously. Instead what we got is an infuriating bullshit that looks like one of those stock logo/branding templates I can buy for $19.95. Sigh.
"The gopher is not a logo. However, when appropriate, it can and should be used on communications that are Go branded, but should not be used in place of our logo, nor should it be placed too closely around the logo, so as to infer it's an alternate logo."
Hey, they linked to a talk by Renee French about her design of the gopher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rw_B4yY69k
I doubt the gopher is either clever enough or interested enough to infer that.
The problem is that the design has no connection or correlation at all with what the design is for. The difference is superbly obvious in the slide masters - look at the code samples - that code looks like it has absolutely no place on a slide like that.
That's true of the entire design language - it's great for a startup trying to be cool, but has nothing to do with Go. It's like what we'd get if we asked one of our designer interns to come with a brand language and the only brief they were given is "It's called Go, and this mascot is non-negotiable".
The hand drawn gopher just looked... childish? It definitely didn’t give me the impression of an efficient and well put together programming language.
It was too detailed to use as an icon, and the lines were too thin to look good when printed.
I'm sure he'll still be around as a mascot. He's still on the site's main page. I really don't see the problem with him -- most commercial internet servers run a kernel with a cute penguin mascot, and many of the rest run a kernel with a cute mascot who is literally the Devil -- but I can appreciate the strategy of opening with a punchy, barebones logotype.
About 15 years ago—long before the Go project—the gopher first appeared as a promotion for the WFMU radio station in New Jersey. Renee French was commissioned to design a T-shirt for an annual fundraiser and out came the gopher.
New logo designs, of things that have been around for sometime, invite derision and ridicule (and for good measure). Getting used to such decisions will take time.
[1] See the black/white image halfway down the page-- https://blog.golang.org/gopher
The old gopher wasn't serious either, but at least it was fun.
The brand book is astonishingly horrible and is not an improvement on the way we are digesting the information.
The logo and the philosophy behind it are the first things anyone, professional designer or not, would think of. If Go's philosophy was to implement the first thing that comes to mind, it would have generics by now :) I think they need to put a little more thought into this.
Edit: Maybe the design could could incorporate a visual representation of goroutines in some way?
On top of this, I can't get over the fact that the design team can't draw. What? How much are you guys getting paid?
I think the brand for a programming language like Go should not look like a toy.
Why not make several ones and ask the community for their favorite one?
Edit: Gopher is still the official mascot, though. So that's good.
It will make the language more approachable for new comers.
The Go website is _almost_ as bare bones as it gets. It functions fine and we are familiar with it.
But compared to say Python, the site looks pretty amateur. If you were to judge a language by its website, I'd say Python looks better.
The new branding can lead the way to a more put together presentation, and that could be good for the growth of the community.
The website will be getting a refresh based on the new design. Since we are making significant changes, we are also taking this opportunity to update our website infrastructure to support internationalization and multilingual to better serve our global community. The migration will happen in stages over the next few months starting with this blog.
Now a "design agency" has their claws into it. My own feelings are nausea, and fear.
They might be trying to make it look cool, but what they have accomplished is to make it look corporate, which is pretty much diametrically opposite of cool.
Go's branding will always be the gopher in my eyes.
In the original the letters were thinner, and that could have made it feel more lightweight, so it wasn't that bad.
Next up, Java's atrocious coffee cup logo perhaps?
The gopher stays on as go's mascot. The brand book even has a page on how to draw it!
The gopher mascot was embraced by the community. It's a programming language... the need for a "corporate brand treatment" should be mocked.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/GQ_India_logo...
- Does a rebranding need approval from the language designers?
I'm eager to see how they're going to replace Java little-by-little.
Better spend money improving the real issues of the language, instead of paying to agencies for this outcome.
LONG LIVE GOPHER!
Our homepage: http://gopher.gg
on the other hand, its also fun. maybe i should just complain less and enjoy the beautiful colors :D
gophers 4eva, I refuse the new logo.
I've programmed for 20 years now, but that stupid gopher and the way it was everywhere was a serious put off for me on giving Go a look. Nerdy AF.
Good riddance.
I wonder if there was a huge internal battle between the brand savvy people which realized how terrible the gopher was, and the Go creators.
Guys, don't be so stereotypical, expand your horizon outside of Pokemon and Star Wars esthetics. I'll put it in a more obvious form: a lot of you like Apple, can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?
Downvotes away...
Sometimes people are the problem. Of course they're just names and have no incidence whatsoever on the relevance of a project. Until they do. For terrible reasons.
OK, its old - but it certainly served the same purpose in branding "the priesthood" that lived and breathed the ecosystem.
Less prevelent: see Hexley, Darwin's (unofficial) BSD-Devil Platypus mascot - http://www.hexley.com
If good, clean text which displays in any browser is amateurish … then I prefer amateurism to professionalism.
I really appreciate that the Go website (appears to be) good, clean HTML.
Not for long if the design company has their way. Just look at their site: http://within.us/
The mascot didn't go away. Too many people in the comments seems to be upset about it...
Point being, its not like it was contracted to a professional design team. They took a very efficient programmer-like path: have a relative who knows design make it. And I love that as a geek, and I love the gopher, but from the perspective of a design professional its time the language got a true logo in addition to a geeky mascot.
Go is a programming language whose dominant demographic is nerds.
> ... can you imagine for a second that gopher on anything Apple?
Apple is a consumer oriented tech firm whose niche is high end goods.
> Reading the comments here makes it clear why most programmers should stay away from design.
You don't say.
http://www.operating-system.org/betriebssystem/_english/bs-d...
Hence why we need a new logo to attract developers from other demographics. A good language without a diverse and wide set of users is worthless.
You mean like Hexley, the Darwin mascot?
There's a long history of slightly or outright irreverent logos in the hacker community and you're on a forum that at the very least pays homage to that culture.
As others have pointed out, Hexley.
Nerdy? Will you give Go a try if they rename themselves to Luxurious Smart Mice then? :DDDDD
Here's a more down-to-earth thought experiment:
Think about the intentions/audience behind a programming language vs the intentions behind a massive consumer product company like Apple.
I like the programming languages I use to be free and open-source - not constricted by some gigantic corporation (coughOracle). Free, open ideals come from the old hobbyist counter culture a few decades ago. That stuff predates me but when I see that ridiculous gopher I feel like they don't care about how they look, and would rather focus on the language itself and keeping their audience (devs) happy. Kind of like - no one cares about the suit, I don't care how you look - just get stuff done.
All this begs the question - why the fuck did they spend time on this branding?
I think google is trying to make Go look serious and respectable from a business guy point of view, and especially not make them think "it's a hobbyist counter-culture thing". No one cares about the suit ? You bet those guys do, they wear suits.
Part of being a good designer is understanding the audience you are designing for. They didn't do that.
The new logo is good and fit for enterprise
https://blog.golang.org/gopher/logo.png
Rene French also suggested they use the Gopher, he originally designed for a radio station promotion, as the mascot for the language.
Constructive feedback: I prefer the Gopher.