Like all great, yet 'trivial', ideas, it seems crazy that no one thought of doing it before them (or if they were, not at the same scale).
Just saying that any business which is a leader in some new field comes up with similar inventions daily - not because they are ingenious or full of great ideas, but because nobody before even considered this path. It does not make them patent-worthy.
If moon astronauts would have patented their first step, nobody would have followed (example is bad on purpose :) ).
But anyway, still hoping that it was a defensive step. This whole system is so poisonous that it pushes well-intentioned companies into playing the stupid game to be protected.
(IANAL, but...) The deal with the patent system is that the creator of an invention gets an exclusive and time-limited right to production and sale (or if method, use) in exchange for openly disclosing the details of the invention with society. Society benefits by gaining knowledge, the inventor benefits by having a temporary right to what they have created.
In the United States, the patent system is defined as "first-to-invent" (the alternative being first-to-file). By definition, it protects the "first to come up with an idea," as long as the idea is useful, novel, and non-obvious. The idea must also meet a statutory requirement, which is to say, patentable.
This is where arguments can be made, as programs may be considered mere "descriptive material."
This is going beyond ridiculous now, trivial ideas with trivial tech behind them have no value and should not be protectable with a patent - it's not like there is a face recognition technology involved, or anything an intern can't "invent" and code within an hour.