Why Googles One Pass Could Be a Ticket to Nowhere

Google has gotten a lot of attention for the launch of One Pass, the all-in-one subscription plan for publishers that the search giant revealed earlier today primarily because it made for a nice counterpoint to Apples new in-app subscription system, which launched on Tuesday. While Apples offering is closed and takes a big chunk of the revenue from publishers, Googles takes a much smaller cut and because it is based on the web and not on controlling access to a walled garden, Googles system is much more open. That said, however, its not at all clear that publishers are going to get anywhere by signing up for it, open or not.

The main benefits of Googles plan are fairly obvious: it doesnt force publishers to provide the company with preferential access to their customers, the way Apple does by requiring in-app purchasing for all subscription services, and Google is only taking 10 percent of the revenue that any publishers bring in via its payment system, while Apple takes 30 percent of all subscription fees. On top of that, as MG Siegler notes, the One Pass system provides publishers with access to information about those who sign up names, email addresses, zip codes and so on which is crucial data that content companies use to market their services to advertisers. Apple turns this option off by default, and users have to opt in.

Thats the good news. And the bad news? The bad news is that Googles One Pass is pretty much just a warmed-over content paywall. All it does is collect the money for publishers who want to try and put up a toll-booth around their content. In fact, the thing that it resembles the most as Josh Benton of the Nieman Journalism Lab notes is the Journalism Online Press+ system that entrepreneur Steven Brill and former Wall Street Journal executive Gordon Crovitz have been peddling to newspapers and magazines for the past year or more, without much success.

Like that system, Googles service is essentially designed to handle the payment processing for multiple subscription sites, so that users can theoretically sign up for dozens of them and not have to worry about being nickel and dimed by each one. Theres just one problem: theres no sign that users have any interest in doing this or at least, not in large enough numbers to make it work for anyone other than perhaps The Economist and the Wall Street Journal. Those who have put up new paywalls, including The Times of London, have seen the vast majority of their readers disappear into the wind.

One of the reasons why users of Apple products like the iPhone and the iPad seem a lot more willing to pay for things like apps is because the experience is so much better and paying is so easy. But despite that, magazine and newspaper publishers have have had little success so far in getting people to pay for their apps. Why would it be any easier with Googles One Pass? If anything, its likely to be even harder, because its based on the open web and users are likely to notice that all around them is free content, while iPhone and iPad apps do a fairly good job of disguising! that fa ct.

So congratulations to Google for making some hay with its launch, but any publisher who sees One Pass as some kind of golden ticket is dreaming in technicolor.

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Post and thumbnail courtesy of Flickr user David Kozlowski