Why Go? Google's very own Programming Language

In the last few months Google's been releasing information about a new programming language called Go.

I've read a few articles and glanced at a few tutorials, and my impression is that it's a pretty good attempt to get back to basics... it reminds me very much of the RISC attempt to simplify computer CPUs back in the 1980s.

Simple is good... at least in theory.  It seems to me that we always learn a lot when we do a good Spring Cleaning to repair what we need and throw out what we don't - but it also seems to me that we inevitably end up with as much junk as we ever had a few years down the road... Simple has a habit of getting complex very quickly.

I am sure the researchers who are working on Go are sincere, but I can't help thinking that Go might be just another reminder to others in the Software Industry - in this case Oracle - that Google won't be painted into a corner.

Oracle just completed its acquisition of Sun, which means that Oracle just completed its acquisition of Java.  It's quite possible that Go is sending the same message to Oracle about Java as the message that Android is sending to Apple and that Chrome is sending to Microsoft and the other browser manufacturers...

"If you try to lock us out, we'll just build our own... and our's will quite likely be better than yours"

Perhaps I'm wrong... but perhaps I'm not.