That's true, but two of the main points they had are huge:
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2006/08/troubling-findings-on-how-some-third.html

"Fictitious ad clicks because of mischaracterizing events." – Instead of clicks, things like page reloads are being used to count clicks; hitting the back button could count as a click on an ad!

"Fictitious ad clicks due to conflation across advertisers and ad networks." – Clicks for other ads (i.e. Yahoo ads) are being counted as clicks on Google ads.

All this leads to some ridiculous final results: "We have seen some instances of reports showing 1.5 times the number of clicks in our logs – for example, in one case 1,278 clicks were claimed as being “fraudulent” by the consultant while only 850 actually even appeared as clicks in Google’s logs.
"

At least they summarize by saying they are continuing to work on it but also may help develop better methods for even third-parties.

While that's true Philip, you must not have read google's report. In some cases, the click fraud agencies report more fraudelent clicks than actual clicks that Google has charged the advertiser for. The report shows major flaws in the methodoligies of the click fraud agencies that severely exaggerate click fraud rates. So yea, google's system may miss some, but the click fraud reports can have adverstisers make foolish decisions with stats that are extremely flawed.

On google's part, they need to find a way to work more closely with third party agencies, and be more transparent or this problem will only increase.

Publishers should use TextLinkAds.com instead. Advertisers pay upfront and there's nobody to complain to about click fraud.

"While Google may have a point in showing other reports’ errors, they can’t be sure their own fraud detection methods are fail-safe."

Exactly. What Google has done is show that when they create some legitimate clicks in a controlled situation, these third party monitors will sometimes call it a fraudulent clicks. That is good information as far as it goes, but it does not tell us or them how many clicks are generated by Google ads shown on inappropriate sites, by popup ad windows generated by spyware, clicks from zombied PCs, or by click sweatshops. It rightfully brings other people's stats into question but doesn't address the question of whether remaining clicks are truly legitimate. That's because **Google can't tell**.

I did a recent test on my site www.maxxsave.co.uk

I clicked a few of the adsense links about 3 times, then at work click other links about 3 times. Within a week i got the following message from google:

"It has come to our attention that invalid clicks have been generated on
the Google ads found on your site(s). In the future, we may adjust your
payment for any days during which invalid clicks occurred in order to
properly credit advertisers for any invalid activity.

As a reminder, any method of generating invalid clicks is strictly
prohibited. Invalid clicks include, but are not limited to, any clicks
that are generated through the use of robots, automated clicking tools,
manual clicks by a publisher on the publisher's own web pages or a
publisher encouraging others to click on his ads."

Just shows that google seem to be on top of the problem.

j.