• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, April 23, 2012

So long, One Pass -- We hardly knew ye.

Under the guise of “spring cleaning,” Google has gone and scrapped the paid-content platform, which it only launched in early 2011.

After what appears to have been an unsuccessful revamp this past February, “Our payment platform for online news publishers has been shut down,” Matthias Schwab, director of cloud services at Google, confirmed.

“We are working with existing partners to make the transition from One Pass to other platforms, including Google Consumer Surveys,” Schwab explained in a blog post late Friday. “While One Pass is going away, we will continue working with publishers to build new tools.”

While Schwab didn’t shed light on Google’s rationale for shuttering One Pass, the service never achieved significant traction with news publishers. Indeed, The Richmond Times Dispatch and Southeast Missourian were among the few papers to ever use One Pass.

Schwab also said that Google is killing its Related toolbar, Google Patent Search -- which will be folded into regular Google search -- and some other unsuccessful efforts.

Although it's unclear by looking at Google’s recent investments, the search giant has endeavored to streamline its efforts. Particularly since the return of co-founder Larry Page as CEO, the company has sought to focus its energy on successful services.

To date, casualties have included Aardvark, Google Desktop, Fast Flip, Code Search, Buzz, Jaiku, Google Labs, along with Google’s wannabe Wikipedia, Google Knol, Google Friend Connect -- which clearly lost out to Google+ -- and Google Wave.

“Over the last six months, we’ve done a lot of spring cleaning -- although it’s all happened out of season,” Schwab said late last week. “Spring has now arrived, and we’re ready to close or combine another round of products."

"Focus is crucial if we are to improve our execution,” Schwab added.

Unveiled last month, Google Consumer Surveys allows publishers to monetize content by putting up a “paywall substitute,” which lets readers take a quick survey in exchange for free content.