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Look at it this way, click fraudsters are parasitic to advertisers but actually symbiotic for web sites and ad networks. So how can you expect them to aggressively prevent it? As long as the fraud doesn't rise to the point where the advertisers can't make money, they'll continue to run ads because the process is opaque and there aren't a lot of other viable choices.

I understand what you're saying, but Google has pretty significant long-term incentives to keep click fraud to a minimum (the future of the company depends on people having faith in their ad network).

Digital marketers aren't dumb. If click fraud drives the effective cost of an a Google ad up past that of its competitors, budgets will move accordingly.

what if the ad network has an incentive to not do it?