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Google Cloud Print Is Turning Off Epson Printers (pcmag.com)

Posted by msmash on from the printer-woes dept.

When Google launched Cloud Print, it removed a lot of the hassle from using a printer. Instead of a printer only printing documents from the PC it was connected to, Cloud Print allowed any device, be it a Windows PC, Mac, Chromebook, smartphone, tablet, etc. to print to any printer either locally or remotely. However, Google Cloud Print has gone awry this week, as reports PCMag, and Epson printer owners are suffering because of it. From the article: A thread appeared on the Chromebook Central Help Forum explaining a problem where an Epson XP-410$185.00 at Amazon printer was turning itself off after 30 seconds. The printer worked without issue for two years, but now it wouldn't stay powered on. At first, this seems like a printer hardware problem, but the printer started working again once it was disconnected from the Internet. However, as soon as Google Print Cloud was enabled, the automatic power down happened again. Later in the support thread an Epson WF-4630 owner reports the same issue, as do XP-215, XP-415, XP-610, WF-545, WF-845, and WF-7610 owners.A change in Google's API for its cloud service triggered the issue, reports ArsTechnica. The change has caused a conflict between Cloud Print and printers' firmware.

Update: Epson has responded to Slashdot, pointing us to its support page that has instructions on how to fix the issue on many of Epson printers.

42 of 73 comments (clear)

  1. I'm ok with that by eneville · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Printers spend a lot of their time performing idle cycles. Seems ok to me if the device is powered off automatically so long as it has WOL.

    --
    Why UNIX?
    1. Re:I'm ok with that by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      That ain't what happened. What happens is the printer is turned off and won't print because of the bug in the firmware that shuts it down because of the CloudPrint API. The problem now is things are so complex, and there are so many API endpoints involved in printing a document. Do people really need to print to their printer when they are outside their LAN?

    2. Re:I'm ok with that by ADRA · · Score: 3, Interesting

      They do when their native printing device (phones/tablets anyone?) don't have every print driver known to man pre-installed ready to go.

      --
      Bye!
    3. Re:I'm ok with that by 110010001000 · · Score: 1

      Ah I see...good point. Didn't think of that. I learn something new every day. I didn't know people printed from phones/tablets. I'm a 1980s guy.

    4. Re:I'm ok with that by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

      I didn't know people printed from phones/tablets. I'm a 1980s guy.

      Me too. So I asked my millennial daughter if she uses a printer from her phone, and she said "What's a ``printer``?"

    5. Re:I'm ok with that by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Yet somehow Apple's AirPrint handles this gracefully. Oh, that's right, it's just local CUPS over ethernet, an amazingly simple solution that doesn't involve sending your documents to Google's NSAPrint service to be sent back to you from Google's CUPS server over ethernet.

    6. Re:I'm ok with that by Yvan256 · · Score: 2

      Hell, I've been reading about some people who even print in 3D now.

      I still don't quite understand why they'd want to print a whole stack of pages all glued together though. Must be expensive.

    7. Re:I'm ok with that by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 1

      As someone who is in charge of printer services, and google cloud print and such for 15000 users, I can assure you that my goal is to be "Paper Less" as fast as possible. It is an ongoing goal, and hence it isn't "paperless". There are times people still need hard copies, but getting people to print less has to be a sustained effort to educate people on alternatives.

      That being said, most teachers still want hard copy versions of student work, because it is faster and easier to grade 30 assignments on paper than it is to do so on digital, but only if you ignore having to haul those papers around to and from schools, passing the assignments out, collecting them, and giving back the graded versions etc etc.

      It is all about perception, they don't count certain aspects against their "grading" time, because of the disconnect between managing the assignments and grading them.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    8. Re:I'm ok with that by anegg · · Score: 1

      I agree strongly that using a cloud-based service to print from a phone/tablet to a local printer is all kinds of stupid, but I'd be a bit happier with Apple's AirPrint if they would just provide the AirPrint service as part of the Mac OS. Having to buy a special printer OR paying a third party $$ to add an AirPrint service to my local Mac server is undesirable to me.

    9. Re:I'm ok with that by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 1

      most teachers still want hard copy versions of student work, because it is faster and easier to grade 30 assignments on paper than it is to do so on digital

      This seems backwards to me. Digital docs can be automatically scanned for spelling, grammar errors, run-on sentences, and even poor paragraph structure. Then the human grader can just focus on the quality of the points being made.

    10. Re:I'm ok with that by Slashdot+Junky · · Score: 1

      Is the job actually spooled from the tablet to the printer or some server where the BOL application back-end is hosted?

      --
      .
      Landfill Mining Co.
      Managing the (Un)natural Resources of Tomorrow
    11. Re:I'm ok with that by Redfriar · · Score: 1

      Exactly, this condition means you cannot use your printer. Eventually, I found I had about 20 seconds from power-on before the forcible power off. It turns out this is just enough time to get into the configuration menu and initiate a factory reset. After the configuration is clear, the printer behaves once again. >>Do people really need to print to their printer when they are outside their LAN? I didn't need to print outside my LAN, but I did use the feature to allow the kids' chromebooks access to the printer. Not really worth it in the end.

    12. Re:I'm ok with that by jrumney · · Score: 1

      It's a very small configuration change in the CUPS config to enable AirPrint. I've done it on a Linux server years ago, but I thought it came preconfigured that way on Macs (at least back then).

    13. Re:I'm ok with that by apoc.famine · · Score: 1

      You're only supposed to stick the left edge together. That's called a liber or something.

      --
      Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
  2. Only apps can app apps! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Google's App Print is turning off LUDDITE Epson printers because they're LUDDITE printers. Modern app appers only use appy app apps to app APPS, NOT LUDDITE printers!

    Apps!

  3. Wish this had been reported a few days ago by BobSpeewack · · Score: 1

    My Epson printer went in the trash earlier this week because it became non-responsive and went into a boot loop. Sounds very much like symptoms described here. It never occurred to me that Google Cloud Print would be the culprit. What a waste!

    1. Re:Wish this had been reported a few days ago by Yvan256 · · Score: 1

      You should have scavenged some parts to build a RepStrap!

  4. People use this? by grub · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I can't believe people willingly send their documents to Google where they will be processed by their systems and stored for however long.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:People use this? by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps you missed the Google "Do No Evil" pledge. They wouldn't do anything like that.

    2. Re:People use this? by grub · · Score: 2

      Anyone who defends this convenience-over-privacy should download and print Jihadi-type information, nuke plans, bio-weapons info, etc. through this service and see how long it is before there is a knock on their door.

      --
      Trolling is a art,
    3. Re:People use this? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's "don't be evil"! That does not preclude DOING evil if you can do it without actually BEING evil ;)

    4. Re:People use this? by swillden · · Score: 1

      I can't believe people willingly send their documents to Google where they will be processed by their systems and stored for however long.

      I love it. It's super convenient to be able to print to my printer from any device, anywhere. Even when I'm printing from a computer rather than my phone or tablet, I frequently find that the native print drivers are unreliable and buggy over the network, and especially over Wifi. Not so much that I can't get it to connect and print with a little fiddling but Google Cloud Print just works, every time. As for Google "processing" the documents, (a) I'm fairly certain they don't data mine Cloud Print data and (b) I don't care. Most of what I print I either created in Google Docs or received in Gmail anyway. And even where that's not the case, the only thing Google would do with anything learned from my print jobs is to make better choices about what ads I might find interesting.

      However... my printer is an Epson, and it was bootlooping a couple of days ago (I turned it off). I assumed the printer itself was having some problem and was planning to investigate when I have time this weekend. Sounds like I just need to wait for Google to sort this problem out and I'll be good.

      Note that I work for Google, though not on Cloud Print. I'm just a (usually) happy user of Cloud Print.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    5. Re:People use this? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Update: Just turned my printer back on, and it looks like the problem is fixed.

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      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    6. Re:People use this? by swillden · · Score: 1

      Anyone who defends this convenience-over-privacy should download and print Jihadi-type information, nuke plans, bio-weapons info, etc. through this service and see how long it is before there is a knock on their door.

      Sure. Got a link? I have absolutely zero concern about any sort of problem like that.

      --
      Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
    7. Re:People use this? by anegg · · Score: 1

      Um, that "Google reads people's mail" link goes to a CNet "Microsoft reads people's mail" article. Doesn't quite make the point I think you intended to make.

  5. Bad QA by mveloso · · Score: 1

    When a cloud service has a issue with firmware, it's the cloud service that's the problem.

    Google's QA is just as good as it always is, apparently.

    1. Re:Bad QA by antdude · · Score: 1

      Like everyone else. :(

      --
      Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
  6. Epson Keeps You Safe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    If you do something stupid like connect your printer to the Internet, Epson takes care of you and prevents any damage done.

  7. Epson XP-410$185.00 at Amazon by fustakrakich · · Score: 1

    Advertise much?

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
    1. Re:Epson XP-410$185.00 at Amazon by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Autoinserted by PCMag's adware, carelessly copy-pasted by the submitter. (If they'd been trying to slip it past as an ad, they would've made it an affiliate link.)

      Just an accidental inclusion. You know, the sort of thing that an editor would catch and correct. Hypothetically speaking.

  8. Dot Matrix FTW by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

    I miss my FX-82., Wait, no I don't.

    Fanfold was nice for listings though.

    --
    I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
  9. Google despises backward compatibility. by TheNarrator · · Score: 1

    Anyone who has ever worked with the Google WebService APIs should know that Google absolutely has zero concern for backward compatibility or supporting old versions of APIs. They would often deprecate old versions of the Adwords API and make radical changes to it every few months. This was a constant headache for developers who had to work with these things. It's funny now that they are involved with hardware that they think they can be so flippant.

  10. Epson??!! They're still around?? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    Didn't even know Epson was still in business, all printers I've used in the last 15 years were HP, Canon, Ricoh, Xerox, or Kyrocera. Or were one of those with say "Dell" slapped onto case.

    How about you Epson weirdos buy a mainstream printer?

  11. Re:Epson??!! They're still around?? by iggymanz · · Score: 1

    yeah forgot "Brother" in that list, but really that's it, 99% of global printer market in a nutshell

  12. Smart defaults from Epson, but bad programming by SuperKendall · · Score: 1

    If there is a silver lining in this cloud it's Epson's choice of printer defaults - I just set up a ew Epson printer at home a few days ago and in browsing though the settings I noticed "Google Cloud Print" was set to "off".

    "What's that"? I wondered, but made no move to enable it... now I'm rather glad.

    So it seems like not nearly as many Epson users will be affected as might have been...

    It's interesting to think about where blame should be apportioned in all this. At first you might think it's Google, but honestly can they be expected to test every device that uses an API they publish? It seems more like Epson should have had better safeguards against the API changing or getting responses that were nonsense.

    You can just imagine a failure to catch an exception somewhere in the code leading to a code path that shuts the printer down entirely so that turning it on again will reset the system...

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  13. So, in other words...a bug? by hackel · · Score: 1

    Somebody found a bug in a piece of proprietary software. This is news? It happens all the time. Google will fix it soon and we'll all forget about it. Nothing to see here, folks.

    1. Re:So, in other words...a bug? by Nunya666 · · Score: 2

      Somebody found a bug in a piece of proprietary software. This is news? It happens all the time. Google will fix it soon and we'll all forget about it. Nothing to see here, folks.

      For those who have an Epson printer and did not know that this could happen, it is definitely news.

      If you think it is not, then you are probably in the wrong forum.

  14. Re:Epson??!! They're still around?? by Nunya666 · · Score: 1

    Currently, Epson is the best thing there is.

    I get prints at 0.2c, no cartridge lock-ins, ink refills are cheap and I get to do it myself.

    Also: This bug was caused by Google and now has been fixed by Google. I never required GCP, because Epson Connect Services have handled printing and scanning for me.

    Same here. I used to have an HP OfficeJet, until a firmware update corrupted it so that it would only work with genuine-HP ink. It would no longer work with 3rd party ink, even though it had been doing that fine for the previous 2 years.

    I donated the HP to Goodwill, and bought an Epson. The Epson works great with cheap, refilled ink cartridges.

    Oh, and I will never buy another HP product again, nor will I ever install another firmware update.

  15. Android CUPS Printing by Zombie+Ryushu · · Score: 2

    Android CUPS Printing. Advertises through AVAHI, works on Smart Phones, solves the problem. No Google involvement.

    1. Re:Android CUPS Printing by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Android CUPS Printing. Advertises through AVAHI, works on Smart Phones, solves the problem. No Google involvement.

      My Android phone with the HP print service installed just finds my HPLJ2300 on the network. No server involvement, beyond the Jetdirect card. ISTR paying $200 for it, and then I went ahead and ponied up another hundred bucks for an additional tray, a postscript DIMM, and a 128MB DIMM.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  16. apple does not have Mac servers any more by Joe_Dragon · · Score: 1

    apple does not have Mac servers any more and the mini and mac pro are very poor fits.

    1. Re:apple does not have Mac servers any more by anegg · · Score: 1

      Any Macintosh computer can be turned into a lightweight server for $20. Its not an enterprise-class, but it works well for a home environment. My need is for a local calendar and contacts and some file services so that I can host my own and not dump all my family's personal data out on Google. Add in a VPN on my home router so that I can get to it securely from anyplace with Internet access, and Bob's your uncle. I picked up a refurbished iMac with a 27" screen, 3.4GHz Quad Core i5, 8 GB of RAM, 802.11ac wireless, and a 3TB Fusion drive (combination SSD and regular disk) for something like $1800 almost 3 years ago, and it has served as our family TV, kids homework computer, and general server ever since.