Google Cloud Printing: Smart idea or Cloud Cuckoo Land?
April 27, 2010 by Steve HannafordPosted in: Dealers & Channel, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
When Google announced its (not-yet-released) Chrome OS to compete with Windows and OS X, it lacked one major piece — the ability to print jobs. That looks like it will change soon.
Recently the company announced that it is developing a method for printing making use of the Internet cloud. To put it concisely, users will send jobs through the cloud, where the print instructions will either be sent to Chrome-compatible printer (none exist yet) or converted using a specific driver on the cloud and sent to the printer. Since Chrome is primarily intended for mobile devices, the thought is that this will make it far easier to print on the go.
Google Cloud Print, as it is called, has already gotten some negative reactions. The most basic one is that the proposed Chrome-ready printers don’t exist nor do the cloud drivers, and there is no idea of when they will be developed and no announcements from manufacturers.
A second objection is that new network security systems would be needed for a print job to pass through a company’s firewall, and even then there would be worries about remote users never picking up their print jobs or addressing print jams or paper out messages. Third, there are big security worries for the user whose print job might get intercepted along the way. Moreover, if you lose Internet connectivity for some reason, you just won’t be able to print.
On the other hand, some say that since this application is best suited to netbooks, smartphones and tablets, the ability to print without a cable would be a plus for many users, especially when security is not a major issue. Another issue where this approach could help is in the overall driver problem. While some manufacturers (notably HP) have developed universal drivers, for many Windows users there is a tangle of separate drivers for each different device on the network, and for mobile users, getting access to a printer in another location may involve a time-consuming download of a driver that is used only one time. Google may be leading the way to the demise of the proprietary printer driver — all-in-all, a very good thing.
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Tags: Google, Google Cloud Print
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