Google Finance is already a premier destination for getting real-time stock quotes and information for the United States, China, and India. Today, the Google Finance team announced that it would be adding the same real-time technology for the London Stock Exchange (LON), Deutsche Börse (FRA), and Borsa Italiana (BIT), giving us a real sense of how companies are doing in Europe.

Here’s what the team had to say about the addition of stock information for Europe:

We first introduced real time quotes to our site with the launch of free real time NYSE and NASDAQ quotes in 2008. Since then, we’ve bolstered our last sale coverage with real time data from stock exchanges in China, India, and now, UK, Germany, and Italy. These partnerships mark a big step forward in our mission to provide our users with the best information we can find.

By providing real-time stock information along with news, the Google Finance product is one of the most complete free financial services on the web. The easy to use sliders make it simple to create graphs that help you make a decision on whether to invest in a company or not.

Needless to say, Google Finance wasn’t appealing to users in Europe, leaving a whole chunk of traffic and usage on the table. These new additions should help solve that problem. What was the delay? It takes partnerships to provide this information, and it took Google four years to get these new markets on board.

Launched last week, just one day after Apple’s publication subscription plan, One Pass allows publisher to charge for individual articles, with Google taking a 10% cut of the proceeds.

While Focus is still just testing the system, it’s interesting to note the types of articles that the site has chosen to charge for. News stays free, while certain “utility” stories are being priced at 10 cents each. These articles include topics like: Ten facts about parental leave and Traffic crimes and their consequences – what to do if you lose your drivers’ license. In short – it’s about articles that have a long-term, useful life.

“It won’t work if it’s about Egypt right now or football results – people will just get them somewhere else. But if the articles are relevant in the longer term then that could work,” Focus’ Armin Blohmann explained to The Guardian’s Josh Halliday.

Focus is giving One Pass a few months’ trial before deciding on whether to stick with it, but is their approach right? I’d argue that charging for these long-term traffic winners is probably the best approach to charging for mainstream online content. News can always be found elsewhere but when you’ve lost your driving license, ten cents for a well written article explaining what to do will seem like a bargain – especially when the alternative might be a poorly written, rushed piece on a content farm site like eHow.

Focus doesn’t plan to base its entire business model around One Pass – advertising will continue to play a big part for the time being, but as a test of what could work in the future I’d say that charging for things readers are most likely to want to pay for is a promising start, and one that newspapers considering paywalls should perhaps consider.