9 figure is hardly enough when some kid sells their vscode fork to them for more, is it? Why not just boomerang and get $$$.
Did that really happen? What was the fork you are talking about?
It was a general metaphor but a reference to Windsurf. On the boomerang side, Noam Shazeer went on to do Character AI and came back via acquisition only to leave again to OpenAI.
Given the resources that would be available to them at Google: compute resources, data, etc. It's clear they want absolute freedom. Good for them. At this revolutionary turning point in history, I want the smartest people working in whatever area they want.
compute resources are scarce and folks are fighting over scraps at this point.