As I understand it the way an aqui-hire works is that the buyer pays enough to buy off the liquidity preferences of the investors with little left over for the

As I understand it the way an aqui-hire works is that the buyer pays enough to buy off the liquidity preferences of the investors with little left over for the founders. But the founders, along with the much of the rest of the staff, gets jobs and golden handcuffs with the acquirer -- which puts their total compensation a few years out somewhere between a 'real' exit and what they would have gotten if they had gone to work for the acquirer in the first place. In this case, there were only a few investment rounds, all of which were reported to be big 'up' rounds, and the (huge) deal was reported to be all cash. All of which suggests that at least the co-founders, and probably at least several others, are going to be very very rich on day one working at Google. Which in turn is not a circumstance very conducive to effective golden handcuffs.