Google wasted no time responding to Apple’s controversial new subscription service. Google today announced Google One Pass, a subscription service that provides content publishers with billing services.
According to a post on Google’s website, One Pass is less restrictive than the policy Apple outlined yesterday and appears to give publishers a better cut of revenue.
Google says its service provides publishers with user authentication, payment processing, and administration and gives the “flexibility over payment models and control over the digital content for which they charge and the content that is free for consumers.”
The service is powered by Google Checkout which Google says eliminates the need to build a third-party payment system into publisher sites.
Google One Pass operates across multiple sites, so you can easily manage content across all of your online properties. It also offers payments in mobile apps, in instances where the mobile OS terms permit transactions to take place outside of the app market.
Perhaps the most closely-watched aspect of the announcement is the revenue breakdown. Google says it will take a 10-percent share from content purchased using Google One Pass. That’s less than the 30 percent charged by Apple for subscriptions sold through in-app purchases at the App Store.
While Google appears to have bested Apple on magazine and newspaper subscriptions, towards which One Pass appears to be geared, the announcement says nothing about other types of content such as music.
Apple’s subscription service appears to cover all types of content, seriously impinging on the profits of music subscription service like Rhapsody and Rdio. Rhapsody released a statement in response to Apple’s mandate, saying it couldn’t afford to sell subscriptions to its service through the App Store at a 70/30 split.
