It's such a huge amount of money. Patents are what they officially say. Obviously, they have partners and they don't want to lose them in the short term, so pro

It's such a huge amount of money. Patents are what they officially say. Obviously, they have partners and they don't want to lose them in the short term, so protecting them seems pretty harmless. But they will inevitably compete at some point in the future. That seems to be one of the reasons behind the "patent story". The other two might be that they are making so much less money on every device they sell than Apple. It could possibly become a reasonable source of revenue (Google almost always talks about market share of Android, not the revenue). The last thought, is the big picture of utilizing the emergence of tablets to become a predominant player in the industry. Beyond search. And somehow surpass Microsoft and Windows as the omnipresent platform. That seems really tough. Time will tell.