[comex]

If we take the paragraph at its word, Google had already “found” fake ad clicking, with a high enough level of confidence that they both “confirmed” it to a journalist and banned the apps from ad products. It was reasonable to wonder why the same level of confidence was not enough to remove the apps. There are some potential valid answers to that question, to be sure (e.g. want to be more careful before taking actions that affect users), but also potential invalid ones (they just didn’t care much about ad fraud and only removed the apps due to the pressure).