Google’s ad network is probably the most perfect venue for committing fraud. Google knowingly allows the fraud to exist and they know they can’t prevent it without switching off the display network. It’s a criminal offence to knowingly allow fraud to exist yet the U.S. government continues to allow Google the privilege of getting away with facilitating it.

As long as Google allows third-parties to display ads on their behalf and receive a commission for it the fraud will continue.

It takes an unskilled non-technical individual less than 15 minutes to create a blog or website capable of displaying Google’s ads, they can then proceed to click on the ads on their own site to receive a nice commission. With some help from forums selling “click fraud” bots and botnet access these individuals can quickly go from earning a few dollars to a few thousand dollars in very little time.

Skilled botnet masters deploying click fraud malware can easily earn $5k – $25k per day from custom developed automated click fraud systems. It’s estimated the recent outbreak of malware affecting Apple computers is earning its owners between $8k – $15k per day.

Very few people have sympathy for advertisers with multi-million dollar ad budgets but they aren’t the advertisers that are suffering, I’ve spoken to many small business owners affected by click fraud whose livelihood’s are being torn apart because of it..

Google has failed to prevent click fraud and continues to fail, click fraud is one human problem that cannot be solved with a technical solution, the incentive to commit the fraud is too high and the risk is almost zero for most offenders – the infinite pool of talent and creativity demonstrated by the digital criminal underground will see to it that Google continues to fail.

The only realistic way to rid Google’s network of click fraud is to shut the offending partner network, removing the click fraud incentive completely and only allow Google to display ads on web properties it owns directly.

The U.S. government and regulators are allowing Google to openly offer the most perfect system ever built for committing online fraud to anyone that wants to participate and that’s why click fraud isn’t going away.