The day after Apple announced it was (finally) allowing publishers to sell subscriptions on the iPad but that it was whacking a 30% hunk out of subsequent revenue, causing many in the industry to say they couldn’t afford to participate (see the earlier MobyLives report), Google announced its own subscription service — for only a 10% fee. What’s more, Google’s system — unlike not only Apple’s but Amazon‘s, too — will work across platforms.

As Ryan Singel explains in a Wired report, “Google’s One Pass system promises to let publishers set up an easy subscription and paywall system so that a user who buys a subscription via their desktop browser can access the same content on a mobile phone browser or in the publication’s apps. Readers will login via their Google account and pay via Google Checkout.”

As Singel also notes, “The announcement is clearly Google’s answer to Apple’s subscription offering,” which, he observes, “was met with stony silence from publishers and open hostility from subscription-based services like Rhapsody. It also prompted speculation that federal regulators might take a critical view of Apple’s policy on the grounds that the company might be acting like a monopolist.”

The ultimate slap: “One Pass may work inside Apple apps to let readers sign into to subscriptions they’ve bought outside of Apple’s ecosystem, much as readers can login to their Amazon account via the iPhone Kindle app to read books they’ve bought via their home computers.”