I know almost nothing (I read the article but that's all) but my gut tells me it could have been a "scoop this potential competitor up early" as there was so much overlap between Socratic and what Google research is doing. Could also have been a "we need a product to justify this research work, and Socratic is a good one." Or it could just straight be an acquihire ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

A 10 person startup without a business model? And all the tech got thrown out. Clearly an acquihire.

How can you tell them difference between that and early removal of a competitor?

What is the difference? If your competitor is competent, acqui-hire them. If they are not, there is no real competition.

Well google did buy photomath recently as well, which is basically the same thing so who knows.

You often can't, which is why they can get away with these anti-competitive practices

Normally I'd consider it an acquihire when a company acquires a startup / smaller company and immediately announces the discontinuation of the product. Less so if there's an attempt to continue developing the product, even if it eventually gets shut down.

That's an interesting word. I assume it's when a large company buys your startup just to have access to the talent, without much regard for the startup's product? What sorts of offers do they make to the founders?

Varies heavily depending on background labor market. In 2021: $1M+ per solid engineer. These days it's closer to $0 as they're not aggressively hiring and plenty of talent floating around.

An acquisition of a failed startup where the purchasing company is "buying" the team of people rather than the product they built.

Aquire a company not for the product, but to hire specific people working there. Like experts in a field. For instance if you have a competing product and want to build something using expertise or if you think the technology can be applied elsewhere.

I think the parent you’re replying to knows that, they were asking if this was an example of that.