I was wondering about this as well, then I read this post. It must have an impact on the 'engineers' who work there having groups of buyouts with vesting periods and larger payouts. There must be some level of resentment (it's human nature). How does google manage this?

Maybe N years ago when google was a little startup. In every big company there is the rule that you need to do a specific stuff, and this is the worst thing that an hacker can suffer, at least in my experience: all the hackers I know tend to switch domain every few months, just the time to understand "how it works".

In some ways post - acquisition isn't, 'job-done'. It makes more sense to see the task through integration in the new company. It is still your baby and I'll bet anyone working on it would see it that way. At the same time It would make sense also to give yourself a cut-off date working for soft-co.