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Google Kills Cloud Print

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Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#101

Post by mathw »

ripdog wrote: post #75

>It's enterprise-ready Hahahahahaha oh man they actually wrote that. Sorry for the useless comment, but I just wonder how many companies got conned into basing their printing infrastructure on yet another Google experiment. I don't think it really matters, of course. Android phones have a full set of manufacturer-specific printing drivers which work fine over the local network, and geofft noted upthread that ChromeOS…

Sadly not for all printers, my printer requires an awful app that does everything itself. Not acceptable!

But yeah, Cloud Print doesn't seem to have been particularly widely used or supported.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#103

Post by JustSomeNobody »

I don't know why people expect anything more from Google.

Google has no customer facing support and they offer "free" services so they can kill them at will.

General rule of thumb: If you're not paying for it and you don't have access to a live person, don't expect it to last.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#104

Post by jedberg »

geofft wrote: post #78
ben_jones wrote: post #65

> We recommend that over the next year, you identify an alternative solution and execute a migration strategy. Something enterprise customers love hearing. Ooof imagine being assigned to sunsetting the service and explaining to what enterprise customers it still has.

Are there paying enterprise customers of Cloud Print? Even today, https://www.google.com/cloudprint/ has a "(beta)" in the logo. Enterprise customers need to figure out that if you're paying $0 for something, you get $0 in support.... if you want something that works, either pay someone enough money to support it, or find an open option and pay your employees enough money to support it in-house.

That leads to warped thinking though. When I worked at ebay we weren’t allowed to use open source software for this exact reason. If we wanted open source software we had to find a vendor we could pay for support.

For that reason we could only run RedHat or Solaris and whatever they supported.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#105

Post by printitout »

Cc'd here from the other thread:

What are some other solutions for securing the network connections between computer and printer (that work with many operating systems)?

Are there any good and reasonably-inexpensive network-enabled printers with e.g. LetsEncrypt SSL/TLS certs and SSO/LDAP/AD/WebID/DID authentication and authorization support in actively maintained firmware?

Could Cloud Print support (with private servers and an open standard) just be merged into CUPS now?

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#106

Post by rapsey »

lordleft wrote: post #86

I know Microsoft gets a lot of flak for their historical support of legacy systems, but on the flip-side it means that as an enterprise you trust that they won't abruptly deprecate something you use.

Microsoft is the enterprise company. Google never was.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#107

Post by ben_jones »

geofft wrote: post #78
ben_jones wrote: post #65

> We recommend that over the next year, you identify an alternative solution and execute a migration strategy. Something enterprise customers love hearing. Ooof imagine being assigned to sunsetting the service and explaining to what enterprise customers it still has.

Are there paying enterprise customers of Cloud Print? Even today, https://www.google.com/cloudprint/ has a "(beta)" in the logo. Enterprise customers need to figure out that if you're paying $0 for something, you get $0 in support.... if you want something that works, either pay someone enough money to support it, or find an open option and pay your employees enough money to support it in-house.

If you click on the article above, the marketing material very clearly stated "Enterprise-Ready". It seems likely some people may have bought-in due to the Google brand, but your right I don't have any sales numbers.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#108

Post by sp332 »

vngzs wrote: post #92

(2013-2019) Gwern did a statistical analysis predicting Google product closures. It's useful context for discussions such as this: https://www.gwern.net/Google-shutdowns

It's not getting killed until next year, so 2013-2020. 7 years is right around the median lifespan according to that page.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#109

Post by radlad »

This sucks. I loved Google Cloud Print. I've never had good luck configuring CUPS on Linux, and Google Cloud Print gave me a nice way to not have to deal with it.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#110

Post by CiaranMcNulty »

darkwater wrote: post #99
geofft wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CUPS is exactly what Google is switching Chrome OS to, as a replacement for Cloud Print. But the reason to have Google's (or someone's) servers involved is so that you don't need to be on the same network (e.g., you can print to your home printer, behind a firewall/NAT, while you're at a coffeeshop, also behind a firewall/NAT).

Buuuuut, is that really a valid use case? how many people do actually want to remotely print from another network to a printer, beside print shops without dedicated WiFi networks? How many people do actually want to use it as some sort of fax-machine replacement?

I've definitely worked places with segregated LAN and WANs, where it's a pain in the ass to print if you aren't plugged into the ethernet
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