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What’s the Solution to Printing in the Cloud?

Posted on 16. Apr, 2010 by Daniel Cawrey in Features, News

Of the many perils associated with cloud computing, one that could potentially be very problematic is the issue of printing. Sure, we don’t print as much as we once did as documents go the way of “paperless” solutions. But the reality is that printing is not going to go away any time soon. A recent Chromium Blog post addresses this issue, announcing that Google will be working on a project called Google Cloud Print, which gives developers a peak at how this might work.

The service is going to run on Google servers, sending the printing information from a webapp to them and then to printing devices which as we all know requires drivers and sometimes other special software in order to work depending on the type of printer. There may be some concern about having to send documents directly to Google and then routing that information back to a printer, but I’m not sure how else printing is going to be accomplished.

In fact, this solution has already been proposed by another company called Cortado that has an application you can use to print things from an iPhone. Clearly you are unable to install print drivers on an iPhone, so this app is pretty cool. The concept is still the same, however, in that another machine somewhere with the correct software installed is doing the work of being the interface to the printer:

This still begs the question: are you concerned that the cloud will affect privacy? Or does it not matter anymore in an ever-transparent world that we live in?

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Related posts:

1. Cloud Printing Emerges in Chrome OS
2. A Look at How Printing Will Be Done in Chrome OS
3. How Net Neutrality Affects the Cloud

Tags: Chrome OS, cloud computing, cloud printers, cloud printing, Cortado, Google Cloud Print, paperless office, print drivers, printers, printing