Retirement of AdSense Referrals & introducing of Affiliate Network

Recently Google has announced about retirement of AdSense referrals. Many publishers are apprehensive about it. I think nothing to be worried. AdSense for content and AdSense for search, the most effective earning features are still available to publishers. AdSense team is constantly exploring the opportunities to make more money with AdSense. For long-term benefit they are withdrawing existing referral feature. From my long experience I will simply say that displaying of AdSense referrals was only waste of valuable space of a website. Earning through referral is not easy. Only click is not enough. The referred users have to complete the required action for earning. That means without conversion you cannot earn even a single dime. It is observed less than 5% users complete the required action. Suppose page impressions= 100. If the site designed with high CTR, say 5% i.e 5 clicks may be generated from 100 page impressions. Publisher may expect 5 X 5%= .25 conversion for 100 page impressions. Can you imagine you were earning from AdSense Referrals in such a low rate.
If you are displaying less than three AdSense for content ad units on a particular page, you can now monetize your website space more effectively by replacing AdSense referrals with AdSense content or other things.
All AdSense referrals will retire during the last week of August 2008. You required to remove all referral code from your website before the last of August 2008. You may save all reports pertaining to the referral earning in your computer. If your referred user complete the required action with one month i.e. last week of September 2008 earning from AdSense referral will be credited at your AdSense account.
Google is now introducing Google Affiliate Network similar to the AdSense Referrals program enabling publishers for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. At this time you cannot sign in to Google Affiliate Network with the existing AdSense login information. You need to create a new login and password at Affiliate Network