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I imagine everyone has heard of cloud print -- it's emblazoned on the marketing materials of a bunch of printers. It was the single way of printing from Android

I imagine everyone has heard of cloud print -- it's emblazoned on the marketing materials of a bunch of printers. It was the single way of printing from Android -- a couple of billion devices sold -- for the longest time, though it was pretty lame having to send a print job to Google so it can be printed on the device you're standing beside. Android 9 added Wi-Fi direct printing which is much more rational -- on a small minority of devices thus far -- but why not just sunset GCP as deprecated (countless GCP printers and devices that only supported out there) instead of outright killing? Because Google doesn't care. So yeah, a lot of people think "Oh damn they are shutting down GCP" because it legitimately impacts them. This bizarre notion throughout this discussion that it was some weird fringe service is not supported by reality. And Google has a poor product record for good reason, so the criticism is very well deserved. They made their bed and now they lie in it. Someone would be incredibly foolhardy to seriously "buy" games on Stadia, for instance, which is a service that has an incredibly high probability of being Googled.

kllrnohj 7y ago
> It was the single way of printing from Android -- a couple of billion devices sold -- for the longest time Cloud print was added to Android at the same time Android added support for generic printer drivers. Cloud Print is, in fact, just a generic printer driver as far as the OS is concerned. There are, and have been, native print drivers, though. HP, for example, has Android drivers: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04024231 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04024231
- endorphone 7y ago
  Google Cloud Print was released in 2010, and was the way of printing on Android as of 2011. Native print drivers were added to Android in 2017. A print "framework" was added in 2014, where manufacturers could build hacked-out targets, which a couple did, although most are relatively newer. This is a far cry from "same time". Indeed, most manufacturers STILL pitch Google Cloud Printer up front, most electronics store put it as a primary selection criteria, and it's always a feature on the box. I'm not defending Google Cloud Print. It was always a terrible solution that was poorly thought out from the outset. But it's classic Google that so many are put in this situation.
  - deleted 7y ago
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_-david-_ 7y ago
>I imagine everyone has heard of cloud print -- it's emblazoned on the marketing materials of a bunch of printers I don't think most people even have printers anymore. If they do they probably have an old one they don't use often.

kllrnohj 7y ago

> It was the single way of printing from Android -- a couple of billion devices sold -- for the longest time Cloud print was added to Android at the same time Android added support for generic printer drivers. Cloud Print is, in fact, just a generic printer driver as far as the OS is concerned. There are, and have been, native print drivers, though. HP, for example, has Android drivers: https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04024231 https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c04024231

endorphone 7y ago
Google Cloud Print was released in 2010, and was the way of printing on Android as of 2011. Native print drivers were added to Android in 2017. A print "framework" was added in 2014, where manufacturers could build hacked-out targets, which a couple did, although most are relatively newer. This is a far cry from "same time". Indeed, most manufacturers STILL pitch Google Cloud Printer up front, most electronics store put it as a primary selection criteria, and it's always a feature on the box. I'm not defending Google Cloud Print. It was always a terrible solution that was poorly thought out from the outset. But it's classic Google that so many are put in this situation.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]

_-david-_ 7y ago

>I imagine everyone has heard of cloud print -- it's emblazoned on the marketing materials of a bunch of printers I don't think most people even have printers anymore. If they do they probably have an old one they don't use often.