Were Node.js and Go the only two choices considered? Erlang, Haskell, etc seem like they would fit the choice criteria, save for dependency management which is generally handled externally via rebar or such. Works pretty well though. Moreover, Erlang has solutions for the listed pain points of Go -- an excellent scheduler, fast GC thanks to per-process stacks, mature libraries including HTTP, crypto, etc.

Perhaps if they had spent more than 15 minutes deciding on the language...