There's one exchange in a blog post linked from the article[1] about dep/modules that I think is illustrative of the entire issue (double >> are quotes in the article from Google/go, single > are commentary from the linked blog author):

>>Although it was a successful experiment, Dep is not the right approach for the next decade of Go development. It has many very serious problems. A few:

>>Dep does not support using multiple major versions of a program in a single build. This alone is a complete showstopper. Go is meant for large-scale work, and in a large-scale program different parts will inevitably need different versions of some isolated dependency.

>Russ [a member of the Go team] has asserted this from day one, and has brought several examples out in evidence, but has simply not convinced the committee that it’s true. Calling it a serious problem, let alone a showstopper, is a significant overstatement. The strongest claim that can be made on this point is that it’s a matter of opinion.

That, to me, is that. Go is Google's language, and Google said that for them, not supporting multiple versions of a dependency was a showstopper. The community read that and saw it as a point for debate, and the author continues to try to debate it in the article.

And that's the issue! It was not a point for debate. Google was being forthright. Google was saying "from day one" it was a literal showstopper, and the community seems to have read it as a figurative showstopper. Who was right in this instance is irrelevant; if the community wants to litigate Google's decisions rather than integrate them into their tools/patches/etc., then the community will not get those things adopted into go.

[1] https://peter.bourgon.org/blog/2018/07/27/a-response-about-d...