This is correct, but they quickly pivoted to targeting the Python codebases. Rob Pike has a talk where he talks about how Google used C++ and C to rewrite hot P

This is correct, but they quickly pivoted to targeting the Python codebases. Rob Pike has a talk where he talks about how Google used C++ and C to rewrite hot Python paths and how they wanted Go to be able to completely replace that whole pattern. Russ also has a blog post (maybe? it also could have been a comment in a github issue, tbh I can't remember) where he mentions converting python programmers was orders of magnitude easier within Google, as the C++ programmers often had rose colored glasses about their own abilities and the tradeoffs of C++. It's interesting, as I don't think Go would have been successful without the pivot, but I also don't think it would have been as successful if they had started off trying to replace Python.