Added link to Nieman Journalism Lab, which first publicized the Google filing.



Google is planning to roll out a system of micropayments within the next year and hopes that newspapers will use it as they look for new ways to charge users for their content.

The revelation was made in a document that Google sent to the Newspaper Association of America in response to a request for paid-content proposals that the association sent to several technology companies.

The Google document, which was first publicized by the Nieman Journalism Lab, indicates that the micropayment system will be an extension of Google Checkout, a payment system that Google rolled out in 2006 and positioned as a competitor to eBay‘s PayPal service, the leading system for online payments.

“While currently in the early planning stages, micropayments will be a payment vehicle available to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year,” Google wrote. “The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time.”

Ten other companies responded to the association’s request, including Microsoft, I.B.M. and Oracle. But Google’s plans are particularly interesting because of the delicate relationship between the newspaper industry and the company.

In the document, Google said that newspapers could also use Checkout to charge for subscriptions, but it described the system for managing the subscriptions as “fairly rudimentary.”

Newspapers have been grappling with an industrywide financial crisis that has devastated many dailies. The industry is trying to find new ways to earn revenue, and several publishers are evaluating ways to charge for content.

Randy Bennett, senior vice president of business development for the industry association, said the request for proposals was made following a meeting of its members in May. He said it is now up to individual newspapers to decide whether to pursue relationships with any of the companies that submitted proposals.

Google, which has long relied on advertising for the overwhelming majority of its revenue, said that it believed that paid content could be a good complement to advertising.

“While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue. In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them,” the company wrote.

The Google proposal, if it goes forward, could put the company in competition with Journalism Online, a venture backed by Steven Brill and L. Gordon Crovitz, which has recently said that it had tentatively signed more than 500 newspapers for its services. Those services include “hybrid models for paid content.” Journalism Online is one of the companies that presented a proposal to the association.

In a statement, Google said:

The Newspaper Association of America asked Google to submit some ideas for how its members could use technology to generate more revenue from their digital content, and we shared some of those ideas in this proposal. It’s consistent with Google’s effort to help publishers reach bigger audiences, better engage their readers and make more money. We have always said that publishers have full control over their content. If they decide to charge for it, we’ll work with them to ensure that their content can be easily discovered if they want it to be. As for Checkout, we don’t have any specific new services to announce but we’re always looking for ways to make payments online more efficient and user-friendly.

Google has been experimenting with new ways to highlight news content and new ways to display it.