I honestly think this is something Google mashed together overnight in response to Apple's annoucement.
Look at the page. It's just an informational landing page. no breakdown of the framework, pricing or any details, and once you click the signup button, you are put on a queue for a sales rep to contact you.
I love it though. It's a great case study for startups! I think they're gauging interest with this one, simple page.. and if enough people sign-up they will actually build it over the weekend.
The payment angle is timely given Apple's recent moves, but am I correct in reading this as Google offering an officially sanctioned way to get paywalled content into the index?
In the past, publishers had to either offer First Click Free or resort to cloaking or other black-hat techniques for their for-pay content. If Google is now willing to allow paywall content into the index for a 3% fee then that's a big deal.
I can't imagine this pushing search results quality in the right direction, at least from the perspective of a typical user.
Just saw an update (towards the bottom, http://bit.ly/hY8Jig)
"Huffington Post reports that publishers will keep 'in the range of 90%' of revenues from One Pass -- quite a nice bump from Apple's 70% offering."
The payment side is powered by Google Checkout, so the fee structure smacks Apple around all over the place. The most expensive tier (under $3000 in monthly sales) is 2.9% + $0.30. The cheapest is 1.9% + $0.30.
> The payment side is powered by Google Checkout, so the fee structure smacks Apple around all over the place.
Except for the part where as a vendor it's only available in half a dozen countries or so, and several major countries can not pay via Checkout either (does Checkout work at all from canada yet?), and where the customer service is non-existent (a Google constant).
>>Where the customer service is non-existent: Hi. Any specific problem we can help with?
In my experience, "Customer Service" can mean one or both of the following:
1. Actual help to resolve real problems
2. A human voice on the phone to walk you through resetting your computer (or otherwise generally offering moral support)
I find that most folks get nervous when #2 is not available, even if they would never use it or it would be unlikely to solve any of their actual problems.
The big G does not even pretend, and I think that is possibly to their detriment.
I say this every couple of months but no one believes me: Paypal has gotten religion on business support. Fraud sucks for everybody, but they really are making AB effort on it.
I got my account auto locked when an apartment move, sales spike (Valentine's day), and large withdraw all hit at once this week. It took one call and two minutes on thhe phone to resolve. "Sorry Mr. McKenzie, we just saw an unknown individual try moving a lot of money in and out of your account and wanted to make sure it was you. You're good to go."
I'm glad they're working well for you, but I'm not working on rumours - I just spent over a week and about a dozen phone calls trying to fix a mistake they made. Eventually they did accept that the mistake was at their end, but until that point their service was appalling. To their credit, though, they did seem to take a lot of notice of the feedback form I submitted.
Except that Google's forums don't help when Google locked five figures from you on a spiky day, continues to accept money with no way to withdraw, provides no telephone support, and offers only an (apparently overloaded) email support. (Eventually I got my account unlocked and funds released... six months later.)
Coincidentally, I've never had such a problem with Paypal. (My gripes with them generally revolve around the glacially slow history search.)
That was two years ago and it's not worth the effort. It's better just to explain the moral of my story when Paypal vs. Google Checkout debates occur: Paypal at least has a phone line.
Considering OnePass was just announced and isn't shipping yet, I don't think we can know yet if it will be billed the same as Android's existing in app purchasing.
Agreed, but i read that "One Pass offers payments in mobile apps (i.e. in Android apps)" Maybe there will be a differently tiered charging system depending on the content (news content vs application specifc content like a new level for a game).
They need to add other payment options then CreditCards to Google Checkout. Nobody uses CreditCards in Europe and it's kinda stupid that I can't even buy Apps on the Marketplace and have see if the vendor support direct purchase form their website via PayPal or something.
They're talking about debit cards - I know in the UK and Germany many people do not own credit cards, certainly in the young twenties sector in the UK debit cards are the norm.
What payment options would you suggest? Apple only accepts credit / debit cards too (well and gift cards which are also primarily purchased with credit cards).
Okay I realize I shouldn't have said 'Europe', because it seems to differ quite a bit from country to country. I myself are from Germany and while its relativly easy to get a credit card from your bank, only a small minority owns one. The plastic cards, that we get from our banks are called EC-cards (for "eletronic cash") and are completly different than credit cards. They are tied to your bank account, work just like debit cards, and you can pay at every store with them. At online shops you would usually just enter your bank account number and it's directly withdrawn. So the additional monthly fee of owning a credit card is not worth it for the majority of people.
On the other hand, even debit cards are usually called credit cards, at least in france (either that or "carte bleue" which is the french standard for these things).
I like how google is empowering their developers with different pricing strategies. Before it was plain vanilla, either you pay, or its free. Yes you can pay for an app and within 15 minutes ask for a refund, but I have trouble sending in a rebate, I know i'll forgot within those 15 minutes.
With these extra payment options, and from what I understand, easy charging system, having someone drop a dollar on content with few clicks or even being able to implement coupons for your content/application will be greatly appreciated. =)
Really? If the terms are clear at the point of sale and there is one central place to review all your purchases, what's the problem? This is a huge simplification of the normal publication methods (subscribe through this company, buy from that newsstand, get an app on all of these platforms) that I don't see how this is more complex.
I personally think trying to fit every type of publication in one hole is a much worse solution.
One Pass "also offers payments in mobile apps, in instances where the mobile OS terms permit transactions to take place outside of the app market." Nice dig.
If you read the Android Market terms of service, you'll see that you're not allowed to use any payment processor except Google Checkout. The only exception is if Google Checkout isn't available in your country.
In the blog post they say it will be "Open". What do they mean by that? Open source? Open for everyone in the world? From what I can tell in the post, it's only available in some countries, and it's also only available with Google Checkout.
I'm not saying those are bad things, just wondering what it has to do with "Open". Unless of course Google is just continuing to use it as a buzzword.
Perhaps not right now, but Google has already shown their interest in the flight information industry with their pending $700 million bid for ITA. Its not a stretch to assume that they may use this acquisition to provide a method to search-for and purchase airline tickets using their mobile payment system.
And there's no demonstration of how it works in the video or in any images. It's as if some people at Google decided to react to Apple's recent bad press by putting up a web page and a blog post announcing a product without actually having built anything yet.
While I suspect One Pass is probably quite a bit from actual use by any publisher, this press release/the video has probably been in the works ever since the rumblings about Apple's subscription plans made the rounds. While not the most honest move, it is a brilliant PR coup.
This smells like vapor-ware; a pure marketing move. The timing of the announcement, coming so close on the heals of the uproar about Apple's subscriptions and pricing battles with publishers, makes it look like Google is floating a trial balloon without having an actual product available.
It's not just in response to Apple, the timing is just fortuitous, O'Reilly's Tools of Change ( a publishing industry conference ) is on in New York this week and it was probably timed to coincide with that event.
I had an urge to implement something similar while ago using OpenID. Since OpenID authentication has a handshake between a content website and an identity provider, it would provide the perfect channel for handling accounting. Paying to read an article would be as simple as logging in.
It is undeniable that Google has enough gravity as an identity provider to encourage publishers to adopt such a model.
I don't really see how to get people to pay for an article sight unseen, though. Familiarity with content by known authors may be enough for some.
Well played Schmidt, well played.