It only started to "seem" that way in 2008 or so when Google-- 
  a large corporation that wants to monopolize a segment of the market- 
  started a propaganda campaign against Apple to try and 
  rationalize ripping off the iPhone with android.

This is incorrect. There have been written concerns about software patents being monopolies at least since the year 1990 (http://deoxy.org/swpc.htm), not to mention the Free Software movement spreading the word against patents a lot earlier than 2008, the first Pirate Party was founded in 2006, and I bet I could dig a lot more examples of "prior art".

There is a whole lot more than Google versus Apple in the software patents story, please read some more about it.