1) Google was behind angular, Google has a huge marketing team, and there is a surreal amount of Google love in the developer community.
2) Angular was the first framework where you could take developers who didn't know JavaScript (or hated it for its worst parts / memories from the bad old days), but were used to learning frameworks (think Java people) and dealing with framework workarounds, and say, use this, you'll feel right at home.
In an interview last year one of the founders mentioned that angular was made for creating form based apps. That is its strong suit, which is fine, but it has been stretched so far now.
Interesting. I recently heard in a Podcast that Misko Hevery (a Googler) created Angular as his 20% project with the scope to make it easier for web designers to create dynamic prototypes.
2) Angular was the first framework where you could take developers who didn't know JavaScript (or hated it for its worst parts / memories from the bad old days), but were used to learning frameworks (think Java people) and dealing with framework workarounds, and say, use this, you'll feel right at home.