A reliable runtime is listed in the three main benefits of using Go. Are the runtimes for the alternatives really any less reliable?

I can buy that the language is easy to learn since the feature set is very limited, but is productivity in the first week/month really what to optimise for?

They also list performance as a benefit.

Go is a reasonable choice, but I doubt that the result would have been much different if they'd used any other modern statically typed language such as Rust, Scala, D, or even Nim.