On the Google Blog, the company writes:

One Pass, our payment platform for online news publishers, has been shut down. We are working with existing partners to make the transition from One Pass to other platforms, including Google Consumer Surveys. While One Pass is going away, we will continue working with publishers to build new tools.

Only a few newspapers, like the Richmond Times Dispatch and Southeast Missourian, ever signed up to use One Pass.

Google Consumer Surveys, unveiled last month, lets publishers monetize content by enacting a “paywall substitute” that gives readers the choice of taking a microsurvey in order to read an article.

In the same post, Google announced that it is closing the Google Related toolbar, Google Patent Search (which will be folded into regular Google search) and some other small programs.

– Honeycomb: Here’s one move that demonstrates the very true fact that open source does not equate to free-for-all. Google yesterday said, in an article in BusinessWeek, that it would not be releasing the source code for Honeycomb any time soon, thereby preventing any manufacturer that wants to to develop a device based on the system to be able to do so, as has been done with previous versions of Android.

The reason, says Google’s VP of engineering and head of Android Andy Rubin, is because the software hasn’t been built to run on anything other than tablets and Google will want to modify it before anyone tries to use it for anything else: “To make our schedule to ship the tablet, we made some design tradeoffs. We didn’t want to think about what it would take for the same software to run on phones. It would have required a lot of additional resources and extended our schedule beyond what we thought was reasonable. So we took a shortcut.”

In that sense, Android being open source has been both a blessing and curse for Google. We’ve seen a huge explosion of Android devices, big-name and no-name, on the market, which has made it into the dominant smartphone OS in many countries already — which Google must love for the opportunities it gives it for advertising and its other software products. But that also means a real lack of control on the user experience and quality, which has also been an issue — for example with the first generation of Android tablets that came out last year, which were criticised for not being tablet-friendly in their UI’s and features.

Another possible reason for holding on to Honeycomb? It reigns in how many products flood the market. Too many other tablets — possibly priced cheaper than the Xoom (pictured), the Slate and the others — dilute the opportunity for those larger vendors that have put a lot of money and effort into developing the first generation of Honeycomb tablets — Motorola (NYSE: MMI), Samsung, HTC and LG (SEO: 066570). These companies — who do have the source code — will want to target first the company in front of them (Apple) before worrying about who is coming up from the back.

– In-app billing: Yet more Android developments. Eric Chu, Google’s head of the Android developer ecosystem, writes on the Android blog that its One Pass in-app billing service will officially launch next week. For now, developers can start to test the billing mechanism, although they cannot post new updates to their apps until next week. Will be interesting to see where the feature, which is offering more favorable terms than Apple is offering (with a 10/90 share compared to a 30/70 split) starts to appear.

– iPad 2: The device has launched today in the UK and 23 other countries outside of the U.S. with the requisite queues outside Apple flagship stores and other retailers in various cities. We will update here when and if we hear of short supply issues or anything else of note. Supplies are reported to be almost absurdly low. Phones4U is allegedly only stocking one in each of its retail stores, according to PocketLint. In the UK the launch of the iPad 2 is going head-to-head with the Nintendo 3DS, which also went on sale today, boasting of 140,000 pre-orders of the device (Apple has not released pre-order numbers).

– MobileMe: This looks like another minor development on the reports from earlier this month about Apple and cloud services. According to The Music Void (tipped via 9to5mac) the MobileMe service will cost $20 per year, and will include some kind of a “digital locker” service for music.

Apparently, a deal has already been signed with Warner Music, which Apple is using as leverage to get deals signed with all the other major labels.

The most important outcome of this week’s emerging tussle between Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is that we are about to have an intense and financially difficult conversation about what a fair price is for delivering customers to developers, publishers, and producers. Economically, this is one of the most critical issues that has to be resolved for the future of electronic content. Very soon, a majority of consumer experiences (that which we used to refer to as the media) will be digital. But not until the people who will develop those experiences have unambiguous, market-clearing rules for how they can expect to profit from those experiences.

The question comes down to this: Is 30 percent a fair price for Apple to charge? I do not employ the word “fair” the way my children often do. I am not whining about Apple’s right to charge whatever it wants. Apple may do whatever is best for shareholders in the short- and long-run. I argued yesterday that Apple’s recent decision does not serve its shareholders in the long run. Google announced One Pass yesterday – hastily, I might add – in order to signal to Apple and its shareholders that monopoly power rarely lasts forever. But none of that questions the ultimate morality of Apple’s decision or its rights.

I use the word “fair” to refer to a state of economic efficiency.

A fair price is one that maximizes not just individual revenue, but total revenue across all players. Such revenue maximization cannot be achieved without simultaneously satisfying the largest possible number of consumers with the greatest possible amount of innovation.

It is on that basis that I declare Apple’s 30 percent pricing unfair. How do we know what a fair price is? In an efficient market, fair prices land somewhere close to the cost of delivering services. This happens thanks to competition: As long as there is excess profit in the system, a rational competitor will lower prices to attract more customers until margins are thin enough to survive on but not amply so.

Right now there is no competition in this market. Apple owns more than 90 percent of the tablet PC business and is therefore immune to the effects of competition, at least for now. But as we’ve seen in the phone business, it only took Android a few years to catch up and I expect the same to happen in tablets. When it does, Apple will have to reevalute its 30 percent price. But will it land on Google’s 10 percent?

In the short run, maybe, though I don’t expect Apple to counter price directly, it’s just not in keeping with the company’s style. More to my point, however, in the long run, even Google’s 10 percent is too much to ask of experience providers.

Some will disagree with me, vehemently. They’ll raise examples like newsstand sales of magazines, where the publisher only gets a minority of the newsstand price. Or any physical retail business, where a 70 percent cut of the sales price would seem like a boon from on high. But none of those examples are relevant.

In the world of retail – including physical media distribution on CD, DVD or even in movie theaters – margins are slim for everyone in the supply chain. The producer, distributor, wholesaler, and retailer. Because everyone has physical costs to bear in a competitive market, they all offer their services at just above their own costs.

In the app world, however, the biggest incremental cost of a content experience is its creation. Once it is created and properly formatted for delivery – costs both born by the publisher or producer – the distribution of the digital asset is nearly free. Managing the customer relationship, maintaining secure login and credit authorization processes, delivering the bits to the device – these are all negligible costs that the platform operator bears as a service to the market. Any claim that these costs are burdensome is exaggerated.

Arguably, the biggest cost an app platform developer endured was building the device and creating the developer tools. These companies deserve to recoup that investment. And they do: Apple charges a fabulous premium for all of its devices. Plus, it expects the user to pick up the last mile of distribution costs. In other words, Apple paid for its investment already, many times over, and only has small residual expenses left to cover. This is why Apple’s stock is so popular. The device owner pays for all of Apple’s investments. Any cash Apple gets from developers is just gravy.

Again, there is nothing morally wrong with this. Apple can do this all it wants (though eventually, someone will call a Senator or two and the FTC will get involved; it’s just inevitable, even if there is ultimately no finding of fault).

So if we can’t compare Apple’s 30 percent or Google’s 10 percent (or Amazon’s 30 percent Kindle bounty, by the way) to other media or retail distribution businesses, what can we compare it to? The most direct analog is the credit card processing business. It’s similarly structured: One entity acts as a secure platform on which millions of consumers can transact with thousands of businesses. What do these companies charge? From just below 2 percent to as much as 5 percent for low-volume, high risk merchants. How do they justify this charge? Easily: They have to have a large physical and labor infrastructure to manage the process. Some of this infrastructure is paid for by partners and customers (your annual fee or the cost for a merchant to buy a credit card reader), but most is not.

This system works well. In fact, it works too well and we overuse it, a problem the last recession hopefully curtailed at least for a while.

Seen in this light, you can better understand why I argue that the long-term resting point for these kinds of platform fees is going to end up below 10 percent. It won’t happen until after 2012, when there’s enough competition among platforms and enough people going around the platforms altogether using HTML (expect Amazon (NSDQ: AMZN) to be among the first). That competitive pressure will lower prices and encourage more innovation. Apple will still have billions in the bank and its shareholders will still be very happy. But the happiness of other companies (measured in revenues) will also have risen and so will the enjoyment level of the end customers who will have better content experiences at more efficient, market-clearing prices.

That’s why Google’s announcement is so important. Because it signals the eventual arrival of this future and provides frazzled content companies with some hope that they can someday return their focus to generating the best content. That’s why they’ll sign up for One Pass, even if they dislike Google as much as they now distrust Apple.

This article originally appeared in Forrester Research.

Among them: Crovitz said Press + lets publishers accept a variety of payment options from consumers, while Google’s One Pass requires them to use Google Checkout. “A big part of the success of paid content is making the system as easy as possible for consumers,” he said. Crovitz also said Press + could present itself as a “neutral” party unlike Google. “Publishers don’t want to be caught in between the fight between Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) and Google,” he said.

Exact differences between the two services are not publicly known since Google has not laid out many details of how One Pass will work. Still, Journalism Online takes a bigger cut of resulting revenues than Google will (20 percent versus 10 percent) and Google’s entrance into the market provides publishers with a bigger-name alternative.

Indeed, one of One Pass’ launch partners, Media General (NYSE: MEG), which will use the Google product to put up a paywall at its Richmond Times Dispatch, had been working with Journalism Online since December to charge some online readers of its paper in Hickory, North Carolina. In a statement today, Media General stressed the opportunity to have a “global technology and search innovator” behind its “efforts to drive more value from our content.” Crovitz wouldn’t comment on individual Journalism Online customers.

Disclosure: Journalism Online and Google have been advertisers on our site.

MediaGeneral spokesman Raymond Kozakewicz tells us the company will put up a paywall at the Times-Dispatch‘s site within three months. He would not say how much the chain would charge and did not say how the model would work.

Since December, however, the company has been working with Journalism Online’s Press+ to charge some readers who access the website of its Hickory, North Carolina Hickory Daily Record. Under that system, MediaGeneral lets online readers access 15 pages for free each month and then asks them to pay $1.95 a month if they are print subscribers or $4.95 if they are not to continue to access the site’s content.

Kozakewicz says that MediaGeneral will “evaluate” the success of the One Pass system at the Times-Dispatch and then consider adopting it at its other papers.

For its part, Rust Communications, which owns 19 daily and 30 weekly newspapers, will use One Pass to charge online users at one of its newspaper sites next month, followed by two others. Publisher Jon Rust says the company will be using a “metered approach” and will also test allowing users to pay per story. He says pricing will vary by market.

Rust Communications and MediaGeneral join a growing list of newspaper chains that are beginning to charge users who access online content: A.H. Belo (NYSE: AHC) said earlier this year that it would put up a paywall at its flagship Dallas Morning News; the New York Times Co. (NYSE: NYT) will soon charge online readers of both the Boston Globe and New York Times; and Gannett (NYSE: GCI) continues to “test” paywalls at several of its local papers.

The announcement is no doubt timed to target brows furrowed by Apple’s own. The subtext is juxtaposition – Google’s key descriptors suggest it wants to depict One Pass as more flexible and more attractive than iTunes Store…

– “Lets publishers set their own prices and terms for their digital content” (subtext: no arbitrary 30 percent commission).

–”Publishers can maintain direct relationships with their customers” (subtext: no frustrations on getting customer data).

– “The service also lets publishers give existing print subscribers free (or discounted) access to digital content” (subtext: no stipulation that mobile editions must price-match others)

– “Readers who purchase from a One Pass publisher can access their content on tablets, smartphones and websites using a single sign-on with an email and password” (subtext: unites web and device subs).

– “Users only need one login to access news anywhere” (hypothetically, a Google Account could get you to NYTimes.com as well as TheTimes.co.uk on any device).

Focus Online, Stern.de, Media General (NYSE: MEG), NouvelObs, Bonnier’s Popular Science, Prisa and Rust Communications are aboard as partners.

One Pass goes considerably beyond Google’s previous routine protestations that it’s helping the news business – First Click Free and the somewhat lamer Fast Flip and Living Stories – and is instead being ambitiously touted as a broad suite of paid content technologies for the industry.

Google had been working on with Italian publishers over the last year, then called Newspass.

One Pass also closes the loop between print subscriptions and digital editions by offering customers of the former access to the latter using a “coupon”.

But, though our source told us Google’s system would beat Apple by taking 10 percent of new in-app subscription revenue, there’s no discernible mention of Google taking anything.

Google’s final line reads like a dig at Apple’s new bar on subscription sign-ups linked from subscription apps: “(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.”

Here’s the rest…

“It is powered by Google Checkout, so publishers’ e-commerce and payment processing needs are covered, and there is no need to build a third-party payment system into publishers sites.

“Publishers have control over how users can pay to access content and set their own prices. They can sell subscriptions of any length with auto-renewal, day passes (or other durations), individual articles or multiple-issue packages. Google One Pass also enables metered models, where a publisher can provide some content or a certain number of visits for free, but can charge frequent visitors or those interested in premium content based on the business model that the publisher prefers.

“It also allows publishers to grant access to existing subscribers through a coupon-based system – so it is easy to give full online access to current customers. Publishers can give their customers codes verifying their subscription status, or can seamlessly offer content to existing subscribers via solutions enabled by Google One Pass.

Google One Pass operates across multiple sites, so you can easily manage content across all of your online properties.”