WebProNews

While click arbitrage is both widespread and often damaging, your story failed to mention the fact that many other resources online, who compete with Google Adwords, have the same problem and even accept sites openly that do that.  Such as parked page hosts.  Worse yet, is the growing problem of pay-to-click sites developing that some of the second-tier PPC agencies have as accounts.  These second-tier PPC agencies, some of them, also do business with Google, crossing over on display ads on their search pages.

One of the biggest problems with Google Adwords is often Google itself competes for the search ad space.  We've seen cases were a search on Google.com (US) for 'free daily horoscope' revealed one ad on the top right first page - Google's!  They refused to comment when one of reporters queried them on it, opting instead to send a general message saying "your answer is most likely found in our FAQS section".

Google adwords also appears to be designed to force competitive bidding - in realtime - jacking up the cost of advertising continually.  That's an issue that's killing ad buyers' wallets, all the while making competitor bid rates rise along side of Google's. It's a real mess!