obvious01

The article never argues that the Google is copying his startup (except facetiously in the title). He rants that Google launched a product in the same space and appears to be making the same mistakes that he did on his first iteration.

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.

Yet you are willing to tell Google what they are doing wrong face to face.

You are clearing shooting to be aquihired