My god, I never said they acquired the domain because of the then-nonexistent DuckDuckGo nor did I suggest they give it up to them. All I'm saying is the domain was sitting there idle, Gabriel asked them for it, and they told him no and made it point to their own search page instead. They had every right to say no but it seems like a conscious act of meanness on their part to suddenly make it point to themselves when their competitor asked to buy it. It's kind of like adding insult to injury (rather denial).
Why are you so aggressively set on defending Google when I'm not really even attacking them?
"Does it seem to violate their "Don't be evil" mantra to anybody else? This was clearly a conscious decision to confuse people."
With your statement, you're implying malicious intent. I'm stating that I don't see it together with substance to back up my statement. That's not "aggressively set on defending Google." That's simply trying to clearly make an argument.
Of they just didn't realize they had such a cool domain until Gabriel contacted them. Google is a big company and it's entirely possible for things to fall between the cracks in an organization of that size.
Why are you so aggressively set on defending Google when I'm not really even attacking them?