It began on Mar. 10, 2004, when a computer programmer from Oak Park, Calif., named Michael Anthony Bradley arrived at Google's offices for a prearranged meeting with the company's engineers, according to a criminal indictment filed two years ago in the U.S. District Court in San Jose. Bradley, then 32, proceeded to demonstrate new software, dubbed "Google Clique," designed to generate false clicks on Google ads. Bradley claimed his program could force Google to pay millions of dollars on false clicks and threatened to release it to others unless Google paid him approximately $150,000, according to the indictment.

Law enforcement, tipped off earlier, taped the meeting from the room next door and soon arrested Bradley. It appeared Bradley would become the first person criminally prosecuted for charges related to click fraud, the Achilles heel of the Internet-advertising industry, which costs marketers as much as $1 billion a year.

One would think that a proper way to validate clicks could be created. An option would be return a minimum of a 10% discount to all pay per click customers of all search engines. This case is pointing at google but it is known that pay per click has had its share of fraud with others as well. Why would the search engine care after all it is not hurting them? In fact they get paid either way so it does not matter to their bottom line at all. In fact it might be the reason the fraud exsits in the first place. Many businesses models do not even have a 10% margin, it would certainly not hurt the pay per click model. Full Story