I think it's more the case that Google has to fight both sides of this: acquire patents for defense in the short term, lobby congress for patent reform in the long term.

I think long long-term, the friction of the patent system goes against Google's incentives. Google isn't a hardware company (even though they just bought one). They sell search ads, and their complements are hardware, software, everything between consumers and search ads. If patents in general are a tax on innovation, that's bad for Google.