Google and menace of Click Fraud

While Google Adsense is most successful and largest online advertising program on the net, its probably is one of the most abused program too. Google has faced maximum number of lawsuits against this program and has reportedly settled many suits paying a large sum of damages.
It is well known that Google has its own proprietary logic of method of discovering bogus clicks and has over the period developed proven methods to track these down. Such is the effectiveness of these methods that the advocates who are in the profession of fighting cases against Google first satisfy themselves that you actually are a genuine victim and on your part did not play any tricks with Google. Though, it may appear a simple precaution, it actually is not, as probably the same advocates don't exercise half as much caution if you want to hire them to defend a murder law suit.

The technology developed by Google, though is a sound one, but apparently is not entirely foolproof. Changing market scenario also makes difference. For example, if you are a webmaster and are staying in a large housing society, probably all the houses in that area would have the same IP. Based on the IP of webmaster and the person clicking the ad, it would be practically impossible to prove the click is invalid or fraudulent.
Extent of this menace:
Google has persistently refused to reveal any statistics for thee the fraudulent clicks; industry estimates believe it to be close to 30 percent. On its part, Google always tries to downplay its extent and has been claiming that it reimburses its advertisers the cost of invalid clicks when detected and insists that thanks to its detection mechanism, losses to its advertisers on this account are very small. Market place seems to be in no mood to believe all this as if the volume of clicks is actually as small as Google would like us to believe then why did it have to settle a $ 90 million law suit in a single case.
Going through various forums, largely the impression that builds up is that the problem of invalid clicks is quite large, but my own personal experience defies this. One that, in my own case I was once given a credit by Google adwords saying that the cost reimbursed on account of fraudulent clicks detected on your campaign and second that I know of a newbie publisher having Adsense account, who got the dreaded mail from Google in just 30 days of his activation of account. Privately he did admit that he clicked ads on his site about 20 times in the month. So if just this number of clicks is sufficient to detect the fraud point, then I must say, that the systems with Google must be sound.
Google may have reason on its part not to release such statistics as these might be used by its competition to wean away Google’s customers and any release of its mechanism may actually guide the potential tricksters into improvising the system to defeat its protection mechanism. This denial of release of statistics has given rise to a parallel set of investigators and professionals that claim to have developed a sound system to detect fraudulent clicks out of ad campaign. At the same time it is also true that those interested in fraudulent clicks would be able to find new and newer methods to beat the detection system.
Adversaries may argue that it is in Google own interest also to allow fraudulent clicks to some extent as it boosts its own revenue as well but I think it would hurt its credibility and reputation much more.
No where in the world probably, the police can claim 100% success rate in catching the criminals and if Google cant catch them all, I think Google can not be faulted on this account. Google, while filing with the SEC for its IPO, disclosed click fraud as their Achilles Heal.
It would be naïve to presume that Google is sitting pretty on the issue. Rather, it has lost a lot of business because of click fraud. Their internal memo, accidentally released on the internet, mentioned their revenues had stopped growing and were sliding pretty much summed it up.