As newspapers and other media struggle to come up with a plan to remain profitable in today's online landscape, Google may have the solution: Micropayments.

According to a document Google submitted to the Newspaper Association of America, the search giant is hard at work on a micropayment platform, which it plans to offer "to both Google and non-Google properties within the next year."

"The idea is to allow viable payments of a penny to several dollars by aggregating purchases across merchants and over time," Google wrote. "Google will mitigate the risk of non-payments by assigning credit limits based on past purchasing behavior and having credit card instruments on file for those with higher credit limits and using our proprietary risk engines to track abuse or fraud. Merchant integration will be extremely simple."

Google went on to propose a revenue sharing model similar to the Android Market, which takes a 30 percent cut of the revenue. It also brought up the possibility of publishers syndicating their content on third-party sites and sharing ad revenue.

Much more on the proposal here and here (PDF).