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A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

blog.chromium.org

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Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#21

Post by cpr »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #18

I love the decoupling the driver from the PC idea, but I can't help but wonder where this is all heading. Isn't Google just re-inventing the mainframe, where they own the mainframe and the rest of us are customers, er dumb terminals? In other words, is this an open standard where any two web-enabled devices can communicate? Or is it a Google-managed service ("we return the status of the print job back to you") where…

They're proposing standards for all the levels, so, in theory, other "cloud printer" providers could do what they do.

So, in theory, it's not lock-in to their cloud.

In practice, who else is going to do this?

I suppose if there were a common OSS solution that one could run per-company or per-workgroup, that'd be great.

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#23

Post by zsouthboy »

tjmc wrote: post #16
cpr wrote: post #13

I sure wish they'd propose something similar for scanners.

Exactly - combine the 2 and you might finally kill off the dreaded fax machine (which despite being more arcane than the floppy disk, stubbornly refuses to die) My parents were trying to get a fax machine working over a VOIP line the other day - a 19.2K modem on a 20MBit DSL connection. Makes you cry a little when you think about it.

Heads up: Fax won't work over plain VOIP because of the audio compression; it's unlikely they have a gateway available on their network that will do T.38 FOIP, they'd need a real POTS line to send a fax (or use one of the many internet fax services).

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#24

Post by AndrewDucker »

tmugavero wrote: post #22

This seems like a step backwards to me. Why are they even wasting cycles on this when we're obviously heading to a paperless society? Maybe they should make cloud fax services too.

Because we've been "heading to" a paperless society for 35 years now, and we've still not reached it.

Sometimes a piece of paper is just _better_ than a laptop/tablet/PDA/phone.

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#25

Post by rythie »

Seems a lot like IPP. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol

I can already print from anywhere in the world to our work printers which operate on a CUPS server with authentication and SSL. I don't need a special driver, a generic print Postscript or PDF one works.

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#26

Post by leej »

cpr wrote: post #21
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #18

I love the decoupling the driver from the PC idea, but I can't help but wonder where this is all heading. Isn't Google just re-inventing the mainframe, where they own the mainframe and the rest of us are customers, er dumb terminals? In other words, is this an open standard where any two web-enabled devices can communicate? Or is it a Google-managed service ("we return the status of the print job back to you") where…

They're proposing standards for all the levels, so, in theory, other "cloud printer" providers could do what they do. So, in theory, it's not lock-in to their cloud. In practice, who else is going to do this? I suppose if there were a common OSS solution that one could run per-company or per-workgroup, that'd be great.

open standard is not open just because there are no loyalties. a standard is open when it's managed by a consortium or task force. OpenGL is one, for example.

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#27

Post by andrewtj »

pak wrote: post #15
cpr wrote: post #13

I sure wish they'd propose something similar for scanners.

+1 to this. I wish there were a unified standard for networking scanners at all, actually. The majority of business scanners have arcane features to Email, FTP, or SMB-share the documents they scan. SMB is the usually only thing that invites practical use on a small business network, and the scanner's implementation of the protocol is almost always poor. I've encountered $5k copiers that could only copy to SMB shares…

I want something less complicated than that. I want to push the Scan button, open my web browser, select the scanner from it's list of Bonjour (aka DNS-SD) discovered web services and then browse, save and delete scans from it's web interface.

Re: A New Approach to Printing with Google Cloud Print

#28

Post by benkant »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #18

I love the decoupling the driver from the PC idea, but I can't help but wonder where this is all heading. Isn't Google just re-inventing the mainframe, where they own the mainframe and the rest of us are customers, er dumb terminals? In other words, is this an open standard where any two web-enabled devices can communicate? Or is it a Google-managed service ("we return the status of the print job back to you") where…

The cloud is not an awful lot different in principle to when we used to lease managed IBM mainframes.

I find it hilarious how quickly the IT industry forgets the past. The thick/thin client rotation has been going on since before Unix epoch.

It's all just a little bit of history repeating...

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