Until there is patent reform, all companies will engage in this kind of cover-your-ass patenting. There are too many patent trolls out there starting multi-mil

Until there is patent reform, all companies will engage in this kind of cover-your-ass patenting. There are too many patent trolls out there starting multi-million dollar lawsuits on the basis of seemingly frivolous, obvious, or otherwise vague patents. As a defensive measure, companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple and so on attempt to patent everything they can possibly think of in order to prevent lawsuits from patent trolls or rivals. As they say, "don't hate the playa, hate the game." It was obvious in the late 1990s that intellectual property laws needed reform, and it's increasingly obvious by the day when we see companies being forced to patent things that appear obvious or trivial. I don't think for a minute that Google is going to turn around and start suing every other website with a minimalistic search interface as their landing page. I think this is a purely defensive measure.