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Google Drafts Cloud Printing Plan For Chrome OS
snydeq writes "Google is unveiling early-stage designs, software code, and documentation for a project whose goal is to let users of the company's Chrome OS print documents to any printer from any application. Called Google Cloud Print, the technology would dispense with the need to install printer drivers by routing print jobs from Web, desktop, and mobile applications via a Chrome OS Web-hosted broker. 'Rather than rely on the local operating system — or drivers — to print, apps can use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs. Google Cloud Print will then be responsible for sending the print job to the appropriate printer with the particular options the user selected, and returning the job status to the app.'"
So Google invented a print server. Brilliant!!! Those guys are AMAZING. What will they do next. :P
MG
I think I'll just stick to lpr...
Why is this item red?
Yes, I want spam coming in on my printer with it's outward facing IP. Not to mention Google data sniffing every document I print.
Worst. Idea. Ever.
Even though this sounds like a good idea, I'm just leery of sending my print jobs through a central server, in plaintext, then having the server drop them to a printer. Just too many places where my data could be intercepted, especially if I want to print something confidential, such as a sealed bid, or an employee's payroll/HR records.
Instead, how about printers go back to old and working standards? PostScript and lpr have served us for decades now. It might add something to the cost of a cheapie printer, but it would be nice to just have one driver/renderer that all printers understand.
I can barely troubleshoot a misbehaving printer now. How are we supposed to fix printers that are only plugged into the cloud?
How can anyone take Google seriously outside the search engine market? What won't it do to convince you that you need to do something half way across the world using systems under their control, what you once did perfectly in your office? "We know what you search for, we must see what you print too!" Stop allowing the creation of the next Microsoft, guys. Especially one with far more control and access to your stuff than MS planned for.
I didn't think of this one. Google now wants to see everything you print too? George Carlin was right when he said we would eventually trade all of our freedom in exchange for new toys.
make it work when the internet goes out?
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
let users of the company's Chrome OS print documents to any printer from any application.
Lets see here...
www.goatse.cx
File -- Print -- Select Printer: CEOOFFICEPRINTER.Apple.Com
Pages: 200
PRINT
Samba sharing already handles this really nicely on windows/linux networks. You just find the print server, double click it to add it as a printer to your machine and go. I haven't had a locally installed printer driver in years.
Now i can google those documents i printed! I trust when i print those health care receipts for my HSA that have my social security, HSA account numbers and my direct deposit info google will keep it nice and secure for eternity! wow, thanks google! Your never delete policy is awesome!
a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer.
Oh good, so now instead of just Fax spam, we can get Printer spam.
--
BMO
I work as teacher, mostly for fun, and got suckered into supposedly being admin for the school network. In reality I'm a general janitor / IT-support though. I have next to no time to spend on actually setting infrastructure. If anybody gives me a simple solution for printing any document, from any operating system on any computer easily to our public printers I'd give them a big, wet kiss. I certainly don't know any easy way of doing it now, because adding printers to students laptops is a f***king bother, and there's always some weird problem.
I'm certainly sure there's lots of other uses for this, aswell as lots of places it won't be usefull.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
Yes, I want spam coming in on my printer with it's outward facing IP.
Spammers wouldn't have your Google account's password. Without authenticating, they aren't authorized to use your IPP server or the printer behind it.
...another brilliant fucking time-saving idea from Google. Now, not only do they get your location, aggregated browsing history from cookies and analytics/web trackers, pictures of your house (and face/car they "forgot" to fuzz out), but with this the full contents of any documents you print with their "wonderful" new service. Not to mention, dozens of other things I'm sure I'm forgetting.
Of course they want to roll out their own internet service...then no bit is left uncached. Forever.
"Welcome to City 17. It's safer here."
Fuck google. Shit disgusts me.
So even more things will have to go through Google's servers. Great!
More of my data for them to parse!
More personalized Ads for me!
Sure it will allow you to print to any printer...that can be accessed via the internet. I'd wager that's a step a large number of people haven't taken when it comes to their home networks.
I think we have this already. It's called efax.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
Google had a cloud printing service set up ages ago, so how's this new?
This is supposed to be for devices that don't have ports (small netbooks running ChromeOS or something) and/or use web apps. Google wants everyone to easily be able to print from Google Docs or some other web based software and not have to think about the hardware involved.
There are definitely privacy concerns, but it's not supposed to be like lpr or Samba sharing.
The search engine was as far as they needed to go.
I'm trying out the alpha, and the printer has an undecipherable message.
PC_LOAD_GOOGLE
What does that even mean?
Reply to That ||
Yea, personal rant/pet peeve.
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=19e18e968ab37b1c&hl=en
FIX IT ALREADY
I hate switching to IE just to print a snippet.
I always thought it was a terrible design to require installation of hardware-specific drivers for a remote printer. You know how you get some crummy nonstandard print status window popping up when you print? Like it will be this hyperbranded thing with a zazzy, colorful diagram of your printer and "buy toner online now" button on it. Almost indistinguishable from a pop-up advertisement except that there is a progress bar showing your print job going through. As far as I can tell, that is the only reason for there to be local drivers for remote printers--so manufacturers can bring up their fancy nonstandard dialogs out of some paranoid necessity to convince you your printer is not a commodity item. In fact, they would probably prefer you called it something other than a "printer", i.e. your "HP-SmartPaperDuplicator TM".
So, yes, this is one thing Google seems to be getting right--a standard print dialog with no local drivers for remote printers.
I want local applications, thank you.
Frankly, I have zero interest in sending my printed documents through Google's grubby hands. However, I think that their implementation shows real promise and(as is even mentioned in their documents) it would not be difficult for 3rd parties to run their own "cloud" print servers.
Even for comparatively small organizations, being able to ditch the ghastly nuisance of driver-shuffling and the more-or-less-strictly-LAN-bound world of SMB printer sharing, for a system that will work on any device with internet access to the organization's print host and the ability to spit out a PDF would be great. Google's approach may or may not be the best approach to the reinvention of the print server; but it has strong potential to be good enough quite easily amenable to 3rd-party implementation, build largely on standardized components(HTTP, PDF, PPD, bit of XMPP, etc.) and Google's support might help it reach critical mass.
it's printing.
Seriously, the cloud is not the solution to poorly-supported printers and difficult to find drivers. The solution is to demand, simple, consistent network interfaces for printers from the manufacturers.
So if this is the future...where's my jet pack?
Being able to print from Google Docs to my local printer would be dope. Make it happen.
considered to be Google Cloud Server?
Thanks in advance.
Yours In Novosibirsk,
Kilgore Trout, C.T.O.
Hah! I've been doing this for years, I have a centralized CUPS server, and all the workstation clients use it to send jobs to any of the printers in the lab.
Phear me, for I am become THE CLOUD!!one!!!eleven!
2*3*3*3*3*11*251
All this concern people have about sending your document to Google so they can send it back to your printer is silly.
If you are using Google Chrome OS, your document already exists in the cloud. To print it, you will need a way to get it from the cloud to your printer.
You mean they invented a printing gateway that translates between their own protocol and a variety of proprietary ones.
This is not about taking a local document, sending it to the cloud, and then having that routed to the printer. These documents are already in the cloud, residing on Google's servers in applications such as GMail or Google Docs. So sending them to your printer from Chrome OS can be accomplished without requiring printer driver support.
Not sure why they chose that route, just wanted to straighten up some apparent confusion here. I think some people assume it will be a "internet printer drivers" for your flavor of OS when in fact it's really for Google themselves and anyone that uses the Google App Engine.
I have no clue what to think honestly. After looking at it all I can say is "okay sure". Is it Good or bad? I can't really tell.
Good thing they don't then. At least, all the decent ones don't.
This isn't going to work with any of my home or office printers unless I (at home) or the IT department (at the office) do a lot of "behind the scenes" configuration and setup to make this work. If I'm going to do all of that work to provide the ability to print from anywhere, why wouldn't I just us up the VPN to provide access to ALL network resources? And do it without sending potentially confidential data through some Magic Box controlled by a third party.
Seriously, the cloud is not the solution to poorly-supported printers and difficult to find drivers. The solution is to demand, simple, consistent network interfaces for printers from the manufacturers.
We've already got that, and we've had it for years.
It's called "don't buy the cheapest shittiest printer with an RJ45 port that you can find". Do that properly, and the thing should support IPP, Zeroconf and Postscript at a bare minimum.
ummm.... this was done 40 years ago. Why can't we do new?
Website Hosting
Along with everything I don't get about cloud computing, one thing I *did* believe i got right about it is that you don't need to know where it happens. This is hardly compatible with the very idea of printing a hardcopy of your document, is it?
There's products out there that already provide a 'Web Print'/Clientless printing functionality for printers.. for example Papercut (www.papercut.com)
Sits alongside/on top of existing Print Servers, has webpage, webpage accepts files, files go to printers.. its like the future, yesterday!
Find it amusing Google are only just thinking about it now when other people have beat them to this party
Why are printer drivers even required anymore? Mice and keyboards and USB flash drives and cameras can all be connected to computers and not require driver installation on any OS I've tried over the past 5 years. USB printers have been around for almost 10 years, why don't they all just support a basic, standard printer API? printMonochrome() and printColor()? Heck, even with an IP-based printer you still need drivers. Pretty stupid at this point, imo.
rooooar
I haven't used it, but the local Fedex (formerly Kinko's) offers a net print service. I assume that if I sent them the document, it'd be there when I arrive. I generally don't have large jobs, so it's easier for me to *walk* a thumb-drive over there, plug it in, and print. I don't have to interact with a clerk or stand in line when I do that.
I have to walk there to retrieve the document anyway. I guess if I had money to burn, I could have the document Fedex'd 3 blocks.
I always thought it was a terrible design to require installation of hardware-specific drivers for a remote printer.
Uh, you don't have to. On Windows, when you print a document to a remote printer, it is converted locally to EMF format (a beefed up version of WMF) and transmitted to the remote print server, where the EMF is spooled just as if it was a local job, picked up by the print processor, passed through the driver, and sent to the printer. No driver need be installed locally.
If you WANT, you can have the driver run locally by setting the spool format to RAW -- it will then render and print to PDL on the client system, and is direct spooled on the server. But why would you do that? Who wants to install remote print drivers locally?
If Google wants to be really clever, they could make sure there is support for scanning in the exact same specification. Historically there has been a huge imbalance between paper sources (printers) and paper sinks (scanners), so it's no surprise that ideas like the paperless office never took off. However, in the last five years, fantastic scanning equipment has reached consumer availability; for example the Fujitsu Scanscap S1500 has an automated document feeder and has dual sensor bars, which allows duplex scanning without weird paper paths and associated jams. It works great for evaporating large piles of random paper from financial documents to old notes from school to obscure manuals for equipment. Hopefully Google will step up to the plate, make Scanning a first class citizen of this initiative, and finally fix the historical imbalance. This will - quite literally - have tons of impact on people's lives. I care enough that I'm willing to help make it happen.
ipv6
I don't get it.. What is the problem are they trying to solve? What they describe is what the operating systems print spooler already does?
If google wants to help printing on the web CSS extensions for printing (headers, footers, vertical positioning..etc) would be awesome.
DAMN, I accidentally printed my plans to take over the world in the Pentagon!!!
Mean what you say...say what you mean.
Teacher, Google ate my homework...
How does one take those technologies and use them to print on a home or office printer while on the road? Set up a VPN? Call an "IT guy" to make sure your DSL router has all of the firewall holes it needs to allow printing over the Internet, and then have someone at home try to discover the IP address of the printer and program that into your device? What do you do about authentication/authorization? I think you're still thinking in terms of a complex, general-purpose, ultra-capable personal computing device when Google seems to be trying to push all of the actual work into the cloud. I think the idea is that you shouldn't need to worry about VPN and firewalls when all of your work is being done on central servers.
Actually, it's not as difficult as you make out and 80% of the building blocks are already in place.
You'd have a small print server at home. This print server would establish a connection to Google's system (they've already got a small application that Google for Domains users can install inside their firewall to integrate with Google for Domains, I don't see why you couldn't add local printer support to that enabling integration of your local printers with GfD) from inside the firewall, eliminating all the firewall messing around and would be able to speak to your printer. The print server would deal with the drivers.
Congratulations, you've just described the very thing that Google is announcing.
http://www.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/google-cloud-print-proxy-design
I think the idea is that, in the future, printers will start to implement these services natively, eliminating the need for such a proxy.
Printer A accepts letter size postscript and scales it to A4 (because that is what the printer has), printer B doesn't and stalls waiting for paper.
"PC LOAD LETTER"....what the fuck does that mean ?
Squirrel!