Why did Google engineers develop the Go programming language?

Google engineers developed the Go programming language in 2007 primarily to address inefficiencies in their existing development processes. At the time, Google relied heavily on C++, which the engineers found to be slow and unwieldy for the company's large-scale software projects.1

Specifically, the developers—Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, and Robert Griesemer—sought to minimize programmer effort and reduce excessive build times, which could take as long as 45 minutes. They aimed to create a language capable of supporting sizable programs designed and maintained by large teams. By borrowing elements from C while introducing features like automatic semicolon insertion and the use of curly braces for block management, they designed Go to be a simpler, faster alternative that improved productivity in complex cloud infrastructure environments.1