Google is way ahead of the game so whatever they decide to do is all good with me. It's those crooks who try to cheat the system and take the short cuts thats disturbing to the public.
That's their general public image. Have they actually behaved in such a way as to lead you, personally, to this conclusion though?
I doubt if Google will dismantle the cpc system because it contributes billions every year to their revenue. By becoming a CPA, they would in effect become an glorified affiliate program, which they have done everything to avoid because its not good for their image. Also, there are lots of genuinely good sites that would suffer because their sites, while complementing adsense nicely, might not work well with CPA. A site like DOGBREEDINFO would not be earning nearly as much as it is doing now.
I bet they will phase into the cost per action model... which means the days of making money from blogging, etc. are over. Google will then give about as much money as amazon does...basically zilch
There are thousands of sites that do not have a product to sell. So, in general, cpc is here to stay for a longer period of time than you and I expect it to. Also, YPN is still under beta which gives us a clear indication that cpc is not struggling.