Google closes down online news payment system One Pass

Google has closed down One Pass, its online payment platform for news outlets, just over a year after launch.

One Pass was launched in February last year, a day after Apple announced it was introducing a subscription service for content-based apps via its App Store.

In a blog post published late on Friday, Google said it had carried out some "spring cleaning" across a number of its services. As a result it said One Pass, which offered users a single point of payment for content across participating news sites, "has been shut down".

"Spring has now arrived and we’re ready to close or combine another round of products. Focus is crucial if we are to improve our execution.

"We have so many opportunities in front of us that without hard choices we risk doing too much and not having the impact we strive for."

At the time of its launch last year, Google said One Pass would let publishers control how users paid for access to their content and set their own prices, whether for subscriptions, day passes or individual article micropayments.

The service was also said to offer an option to build metered models, requiring payment for some content but not all.

A number of publishers were announced at launch as "some of our first Google One Pass partners", including German news outlet Axel Springer AG, with the system also available from launch in the UK, Canada, France, Italy, Spain and the US.

At the time of writing Journalism.co.uk was unable to confirm which news outlets were using the system when it closed.

In its blog announcement Google said it is "working with existing partners to make the transition from One Pass to other platforms, including Google Consumer Surveys".

Google's Consumer Surveys, a data collection service, was launched last month. The service works by asking readers who land on a participating site a question, the answer for which can then be sold on to market research companies. The survey does not ask for personal data.

For every response sent to Google, publishers get $0.05.

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