Newspapers and TV channels were held to Truth in Advertising Laws, and obvious scams would trigger law suits, from consumer groups, from the FCC itself sometimes, from rival newspapers and TV channels.

Google has enough of a near-monopoly in ads that there aren't rivals scaled enough to defend the public good out of the greed of their pocket books if not the good of everyone else. Google's competitors are too busy selling ad space to the same and similar lowest common denominator polluters and scammers than to police Google enough to hope to put it out of business.

The FCC gave up on policing anything on the internet ages ago. Between Congressional protections and multiple administrations trying to keep the FCC weak, it doesn't seem to have enough power to do anything towards Google.

I suppose that leaves consumer advocacy groups. I don't know how we build and scale a Consumers Against Predatory Google Ads to the point that it can force Google to reconsider their approach to advertising for the consumer good instead of evil. But then I also don't understand how Google isn't already doing tremendous enough damage to their brand that there isn't already enough of a sentiment that Google is actively engaged in evil and needs to stop, five or six years ago at least (or maybe at least as far back as when Google bought/merged Doubleclick). Their brand, too, seems too big to fail at this point, and it is weird to me.