In a way Go is a step backwards from C towards Pascal. Since a number of people that had extensive C experience and were in fact present at the birth of the C language made that decision I figure they are doing it for a good reason.

I can read Go easily enough, I haven't done any major writing in it (yet), other than some minor work on Hugo trying to help to nail down/replicate a bug. It was easy enough that I think I'd pick it up quite fast, the syntax feels 'weird' to me but that's most likely just unfamiliarity.