Mobile
Google Wants To Print Your Stuff From the Cloud
Google is talking about one of the “real work” issues associated with Cloud Computing and that’s printing. You can work all day using Cloud software but if you need hard copy you have to print those documents somewhere, somehow. Of course with with the advent of more mobile devices that allow you to create and view content, being able to print from those devices is becoming a key issue as well.
Google is laying out how it sees this working with its Chrome OS in the future. Emphasis on in the future.
The project is called Google Cloud Print and the goal is to be able to print to any printer anywhere in the world from whatever device you’ve got your hands on. Using API’s an application (native or cloud based) the software will talk to Cloud Print, tell it what you want and where you want it and you’ll have hard copy. There won’t be any printer drivers necessary.
That said, Google is also working on a solution for existing or legacy printers that would come in the from of software (included with Chrome) that is installed on the computer a printer is attached to. At the moment they are working on the Windows version with versions for Mac and Linux coming down the road. Google is also looking to potentially work with router manufacturers to possibly have that software installed on those devices as well.
All of this depends on the industry supporting this with new printers, and I’m guessing they probably will.
Nameless
04/19/2010 at 1:37 pm
This sounds like it could have some interesting uses…but if it can be used, it WILL be ABUSED, and this is rife with abuse potential if some unsavory person gets access to the world’s printers.
-They could just print something repeatedly and practically endlessly just to burn through everyone’s ink/toner and paper, not to mention denying access to actual print jobs where network printers are key to keeping a business running.
-Worse off, that something could be oh-so-very-NSFW, so depraved that you’d only find it in the bowels of the Internet, and all of a sudden, it’s spitting out of the work printer by the dozens. Someone could get mis-blamed and fired for that.
How are they going to prevent such things from happening? My guess is that each printer can only accept print jobs from whitelisted Google Accounts, but I’m not sure if this would be secure enough or too inconvenient for what this is trying to accomplish.