Google already had the tech infrastructure for Helpouts. They would have aquihired them for their tiny user base and/or their domain-specific knowledge.

While, the author of the article has learned a lot over the past year - I think it is a safe bet that the information was not worth a lot to google. First, they could easily discover the same information after a few quick iterations. Second, there is a lot of organization debt during an aquihire which would make the knowledge transfer very expensive.