Google Quietly Kills Cloud Print
Google quietly revealed this week that it will kill Cloud Print, a cloud-based printing solution that never exited beta over almost 10 years.
“Cloud Print, Google’s cloud-based printing solution that has been in beta since 2010, will no longer be supported as of December 31, 2020,” a Google support document explains. “Beginning January 1, 2021, devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print. We recommend that over the next year, you identify an alternative solution and execute a migration strategy.”
Cloud Print integrated with other Google services like Gmail, Google Docs, and Chrome, and it was originally positioned as a printing solution for Chrome OS. But with Chrome OS offering native print services now, Cloud Print became superfluous. Certainly, the Chrome OS print experience is on par with that of, say, Windows 10 in S mode.
Regardless, Google is getting savaged by bloggers for killing yet another service, one that most of them never even tried, let alone used regularly. But the biggest impact here, I bet, will be in education, since Chromebooks are sold in large part on their lack of management expertise. And figuring out whether they can still print will be a task many educators are not ready for.