In a way, yes. Research in industry has the advantage that you don't have to "waste" your time applying for grants in order to fund your own research group. A lot of people seem to live in an illusion that professors actually spend most of their time doing research, they are the managers of research groups more than anything else and growing those research groups is hard work and takes up close to all of your time (then add teaching to this). You are unlikely to have more than a few permanent researchers under you and these researchers will most likely be trying to leave within a few year and get a professorship of their own.
Add to this that it is an enormous pain to solve engineering problems at a university, you usually have to hand this to students, limiting what you can produce and maintain. The best I have ever seen for a group was a single full-time software engineer and this was at arguably the most prestigious university in the world. And don't get me started on the fact that there is a poor incentive to produce good software in academia, even though said software can be essential to make research possible.
I don't know Hinton in person, but I can imagine that at his age both the possibility of something new and the promise of a strong engineering and financial backing for a large group is enormously tempting (also, do they force professors into retirement or start denying them grants in Canada?). Oh, and to those pointing out the potential salary, if my knowledge of the financial situation of professors that have been on tenure is generalisable I would be surprised if personal finances would mean much at this point.