Don't want to be a google hater -
one thing that does concern me greatly about google's entire revenue system being built on click-through ads, is that they essentially benefit financially from any fraud. that is, as middlemen for advertising, they profit from any click fraud.
i guess in some sense this is an issue in all advertising venus - i.e. a magazine has good reason to inflate it's distribution numbers. what's a bit insidious in this case though, is that the middleman has a real motivation to just turn a blind eye to any click fraud, while keeping their hands technically clean.
anyway, just food for thought. all advertising is evil anyway.
“Google has some very good reasons for keeping parts of its business secret,” says the LA Times — what if one of those reasons is their knowledge of (and complicity with) rampant click fraud.
Google is an investor darling, so nobody wants to contemplate this possibility.
