I've worked on many SEM campaigns over the last 5+ years spending millions on Google and calling it a "scam" seems a bit extreme for the following reasons: 1)

I've worked on many SEM campaigns over the last 5+ years spending millions on Google and calling it a "scam" seems a bit extreme for the following reasons: 1) Very few categories have CPCs upwards of $3. If that's what you were paying, it's either that you had a poor quality score (hence high opportunity cost to show your ad according to Google) or it was a category that was competitive and had the economics to justify a $3+ CPC (simple economics). 2) Google has extensive bot traffic and fraud prevention to ensure ad clicks are not coming from fake people. You tend to find much lower quality clicks when you opt into the content network but from the search network, I've never seen much fake activity (looking at logs/analytics, etc.). 3) It doesn't even matter what is being charged by Google, unless an advertiser is completely naive, they should be paying the cost that makes sense for their business. I don't care if I pay $25 per click if I can make that back overall. Similarly, even if a portion of the clicks are fraudulent or bots, you should be adjusting your bids downward to reflect that.