It turns out that Google is a collection of people with similar aims but differing views, not a cabal of braniacs. The original paper was written by a Googler who likely published it on his own for fun (and clearly without review from a Go developer); Russ Cox (also a Googler) "shreded" the paper here without himself passing it by the Scala enthusiasts for their take on it, etc.

Russ masterfully also demonstrated the Google cultural value of politeness, so I expect the results of this blog post will be taken in the gracious manner in which they were written.