> They might not want to go to Google. Doing this, an acquihire, they can at least get a couple years out of the team, holding the vesting of the shares over their heads, before the team breaks up.

That sounds terribly. You're hiring a team that wasn't able to deliver, for a ridiculous premium (essentially a ~$10m signup bonus per employee), knowing that long-term there's no structural future as they're leaving at the earliest opportunity, i.e. when you stop bribing them to stay on with a share incentive.

Perhaps they built some really promising IP that could work well with Google, in addition to an undoubtedly useful acqui-hire, that'd explain things. I don't think your reading is very plausible but who knows.