I just got this surprise email from Google adsense that they are retiring all their referrals program at end of August.

Hello,

Thank you for participating in the AdSense Referrals program.
We’re writing to let you know that we will be retiring the AdSense
Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate
your patience during this transition and here are some alternative
options to consider:

* Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of
DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now
operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting
users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense
Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers
to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on
advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For
further details, please visit:
www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork.
* AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense
for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the
referral ad units with standard AFC ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google
products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals
code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August.
We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is
retired:

* Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a
moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last
week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your
ad space.
* Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create
and save all reports related to the referrals program on your
desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign
information

Why is this happening?
We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing
and supporting features which drive the best monetization results
for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing
features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most
effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring
the AdSense Referrals program. If you have any additional
questions, please visit our Help Center:
http://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/topic.py?topic=14882

Sincerely.

The Google AdSense Team

This isn’t the first time Google has screwed over their advertisers. You might have remembered where one day they decided to dramatically change the payout structure of their affiliate program for Adsense. While I have seen many affiliate merchants change their payout terms on a whim, I think for a large company like Google to change it radically 6 months ago and then drop it completely today, just shows you what kind of company they are.

There were a lot of people who relied on them, building websites and taking weeks to do it around referrals programs. They figured that Google referrals network would be around and that they could trust Google. I’m glad I never got heavily into Google Referrals. I never cared for it from the start nor do I care for Google that much anyways. Now some have to completely change their sites or lose all their affiliate income because they can’t use Google Referrals network or even promote the adsense referral program. Personally, ive been distancing myself from Google for many months now, and if they ever restart their adsense referral program again with Doubleclick I will have nothing to do with it.