Google responds to Apple's 30% subscriptions with Google One Pass

A day after Apple officially dropped the hammer on app content providers with their "we take 30% and you're not allowed to price it differently and we probably won't give you any demographic information about your subscribers" model, Google has announced their own "we'll only screw you over for 10%" model. What an amazing coincidence!

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-20032217-1.html
http://www.google.com/landing/onepass/

The Google model is a lot more flexible and seems to be based more on "we provide enough value to you to be worth that 10%" rather than Apple's line of "you owe us EVERYTHING so just count yourself lucky we're only taking 30%." I partially base this on the fact that there's nothing forcing you to use OnePass if you write android apps, right? As far as I know, on android app developers can do whatever they want. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

This is also pretty much just affecting subscription-based products for OnePass, whereas Apple's recent changes affect their new subscription feature as well as non-subscription content (e.g. ebooks).

Apple appears to be making the same mistake it did that lost it the Mac market ("You'll pay dearly for our clearly superior product!"). But maybe it can pull it off this time since it waited to get more of a lock on the market before firing up the death star. Time will tell.

And how are any of these deals for content creators, you ask? What does the online content business have to do with any of those people?! ;)

Can someone please clarify for me? Does this mean that content purchased through apps on an iphone use the apple apps, and the Google service is for apps used on android phones?

They've mostly caved on this, though. (I predicted that on Twitter, although that and $2 will get me a cup of coffee.)

Really? That's good to hear. Have to admit I haven't been following it. What are some examples of them caving?

An update. Amazon still has some work to do to come into compliance.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/june-30-judgment-day-for-amazons-kindle-on-appl...