Printing in Chrome OS: Google Cloud Print

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Google chrome OS is all about cloud. All the applications will be on cloud (web apps) such as Gmail, Twitter, Google Docs. You’ll be able to do almost everything on cloud which you do on your PC or Mac. You can chat, email, upload/share photos most of the things a normal user need. But a normal user also need to work on documents. There is Google Docs for that or maybe Microsoft Office’s Cloud version. But what about printing from Chrome OS. Does Google plan to write drivers for all the printers?

Google Cloud print
Google Cloud print

Google came up with a unique and innovative answer to the printing problem. Google plans to launch a cloud solution printing, Google Cloud Print. It will be a web service and can be accessed from anywhere on the web. The Apps will be able to print the documents using Google Cloud Print. First the print document will be sent to the Google Cloud print. then a printer (selected by the user) connected to the service will print the document. The printing will be achieved by either using a normal printer through a proxy (an application installed on a conventional OS with appropriate printer drives) or Cloud aware print. Cloud aware printers will be special devices which will come with firmware capable of printing from cloud. As google puts it

The ideal experience is for your printer to have native support for connecting to cloud print services. Under this model, the printer has no need for a PC connection of any kind or for a print driver. The printer is simply registered with one or more cloud print services and awaits print jobs.

This will mean that you’ll need Cloud aware printer at your home or office or a normal/network printer connected to a PC or Mac or Linux Workstation. But this is expected as Google Chrome OS is not supposed to be a full replacement to Conventional Desktop OS.

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Do let us know your thought about Google cloud printer?

2 Comments

Swati May 13, 2010

nice post. this cloud print is so like google. this way we might be able to print from phone even if not at home or office.

Amit kumar May 13, 2010

Great post …I really like this….