The only conclusion I can draw from this is that some engineers are not great at arguing the merits and challenges of a programming language. GC vs non-GC should be one of the first and most straightforward decisions made when picking a language. It's hard to tell in this situation given that there are no concrete examples of what the arguments were, but if one is seriously considering Go for a domain, then they don't actually need the complexity a non-GC language brings.
If anything, maybe this says there is room for a Rust-like GC'd language.
The only conclusion I can draw from your comment is that you wanted to provide an example of the sort of flawed reasoning that the article is in fact discussing.
If anything, maybe this says there is room for a Rust-like GC'd language.