Google Affiliate Network closes

This just showed up in my inbox.

"Our goal with Google Affiliate Network has been to help advertisers and publishers improve their performance across the affiliate ecosystem. Cost-per-action (CPA) marketing has rapidly evolved in the last few years, and we constantly evaluate our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers. To that end, we’ve made the difficult decision to retire the Google Affiliate Network and focus on other products that are driving great results for clients. "

As a long-time affiliate, I've never really had to pay attention to GAN. This is a shutdown that is completely justified; there are a half dozen companies who do a better job, and Google hasn't put the time and effort into making their affiliate network successful or compelling.

When Google purchased Double Click they got a bunch of cool Double Click advertising technology along with the Double Click affiliate network. They did an ok job with the affiliate network (GAN), but you could tell it was never a priority of theirs.

This will cause some trouble for affiliates, but most major stores are in multiple affiliate networks already.

GAN wasn't really panning out to be anything special. It seemed that they were too distracted to really make it a worthwhile service or at least a better one than existing companies before and since they bought DoubleClick.

Shame they didn't shut this down first instead of Reader.

Is something going on inside Google, perhaps revenue-wise? Maybe it's just increased media coverage, but they really seem to be trimming the fat.

I honestly don't understand why Google got into this business in the first place when there were so many established companies do a much better job than they ever aspired. "Google Affiliate" always seemed like a me-too/just-because-we-can service.