[jpalomaki]

If you are a good guy, getting a patent for X may help you prevent bad guys from using X.

Also if you don't patent X, somebody else might and then figure out a away to use it against you.

News sites too often write the patent articles in the form "company A plans to do Z" when the only fact available is that company A has applied a patent for Z. There's an incentive for a company to patent pretty much everything they can, since besides the patenting costs, there's no downside I'm aware of in having extra patents. The costs are probably negligible on Google/Amazon scale and when you have good processes.

[JoshMnem]

Amazon uses them offensively, so that argument probably doesn't apply in this case. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1-Click#Barnes_.26_Noble