Thats fine but I think many are misinterpreting what occurs upon acquirement of a company. The assets get broken up and each asset is analyzed to decipher how it should be put to use or disposed of for the company. Some person or work group made a decision to point the duck.com new domain name at search. Its not like when they acquire the domain names they just automatically all switch to Google.com.

I actually don't find it to be incredibly evil. There are a number of teams at Google that try to best understand how to best put these domains and assets to use in the interest of Google. They pointed it at search and continue to do so because they have gotten some benefit from it.

Additionally, if Google wasn't getting benefit from this wouldn't it make more sense to point this domain at something WebM related for customer transition?

In my opinion, just like landing pages, it makes most sense to point unused domain names to the place that makes you the most money.

Pointing On2 at company info makes sense. People typing it would be looking for that company info. People typing "duck" are very unlikely to be looking for anything about the old company called Duck so it should go to the money page.

This is obviously a deliberate poking-of-tongues at DDG. http://www.on2.com/ was apparently owned by the same company but leads to an page with information about the buyout.

I just said that about On2, and explained why the two domains would be handled differently.