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It's also funny when Google does 'nice' things, it still gets attacked, even though they don't seem to have bought the domain to be malicious.

I don't see what's so nice about this if all they were doing was squatting on the domain. It's good that they stopped squatting, let's leave it at that.

Why it was squatting?

If you own a domain you have no intent to use, which someone else may conceivably want, you're squatting.

Google owned the domain because they acquired a company that used to be named "Duck Corporation" and predated DuckDuckGo.

A few months ago, DuckDuckGo asked for the domain, Google agreed to give it to them for free, and the transfer took place today.

That doesn't really seem like squatting, at least not how the term is generally used.

Then, it doesn't apply to this case

It's probably to help stave off the crescendo of EU antitrust cases.

Reminds me of when Microsoft invested in Apple to keep that business alive.