Google to Kill Google Cloud Print Service in 2020
Google always keeps experimenting on new services to see if they can come up with any breakthrough apps or services. And at the same time, it also kills many services after being unable to create any profitable market for that service. One such service that Google has decided to kill is Google Cloud Printing service. For those who don’t know Google Cloud Print service, it is an online service offered by Google to make your ‘dumb’ printer a smart printer. With Google Cloud Print service, one can easily connect a printer to a cloud service and receive print instructions over the cloud. You can print from any internet-connected computer, laptop, and even smartphones. All you need is either a device running Chrome OS or a device that Chrome Browser. This made it easier for every Google Chrome Browser users to print from anywhere the world with just one click.
The best part of this service was that your printer didn’t need to have a Wi-Fi connectivity option. The way the service worked is that the printer connects to a local computer that is on Chrome OS or using Chrome Browser and when you instruct print from anywhere over the internet using the same Google account, Cloud Print will instruct your local computer to print the document. This ability to print over the cloud made this appealing to many business users. Google Cloud Print was baked into the Android OS natively. For iOS users, the function was available on Gmail, Chrome, and G-suits.
Though it didn’t perform as well as Google would’ve liked it to perform. That is the reason why Google is sending this service to Google Graveyard next year. The service was first introduced in 2010 as a beta program, but it never got out of its beta stage. In a support page post, Google said that “[Google Cloud Print] will no longer be supported as of December 31, 2020. Beginning January 1, 2021, devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print.“
Google suggests users who use Google Cloud Print to migrate to native print features on their used OS or platform or use any third-party print solution.
“Google has improved the native printing experience for Chrome OS, and will continue adding features to native printing. For environments besides Chrome OS, or in multi-OS scenarios, we encourage you to use the respective platform’s native printing infrastructure and/or partner with a print solutions provider.”
–Google Support Page
With this decision, many people have expressed their anger and frustration that the convenient service from Google is about dying. Maybe, for this reason, Google has given the notice a year prior, to make it easier for users to move to other printing services.
It is not that Google Cloud Print was a total disaster. It has a sizeable number of users, and its service even got built-in in many printers. Google has a list of almost a thousand printers from 20 brands that have Google Cloud Print built-in. That means that those printers can prints direct from Google Cloud Print service without having to connect to a local computer. It is just that the adoption rate of Google Cloud Print is not as big as what Google thought it would be.
Anyway, if you are a Google Cloud Print user, you have one year to migrate to another cloud-based print service. What do you think of this news? Do you think Google should’ve left this program to grow for a few more years? I would love to know your thoughts in the comment section below.
