Sure, I think it's fair to say they've focused a lot more on implementation and library changes and not language changes up until recently. Things like rewriting the compiler from C, improving code generation / escape analysis / GC, more platform / architecture support, improving the standard library, getting a reasonable package manager, etc.

So it seems a little premature to read some secret anti-generics stance into it (and it not just being a matter of priorities) since there were all these other areas that they were also way behind Java in.

After package management was in generics started showing signs of life again, so it all seems reasonably consistent with the Go team just wanting to clear other stuff off their plate first before tackling it. Hopefully we see it in a similar timeframe to major Java/C++ features now that it's being worked on more.

If there's any silver lining the actual proposals seem pretty ambitious, seems like they want to enable a lot more than just new type safe collections if they add the feature.