Everyone went bonkers over HAVING to have HTTPS when Google made it an SEO ranking factor. Everyone didn't really "need" it - site's that were just content with no form submissions or anything that should be kept private did it just for the "juice". Yes, you can't sniff the traffic, but the URL is still there in the headers and the logs.
Although, I'm sure the hosting companies loved that most of their clients now had to pay for those dedicated I.P. addresses and certs.
