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Google Kills Cloud Print

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Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#341

Post by tedunangst »

toast0 wrote: post #203
darkwater wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It's like sort of useful. In the old days, I would print my lab reports to the college printer from home (using smb based print spooling, which dates me, because smb over the internet was allowed then). You could also use cloudprint to send a document to a print shop before you got there; not the worst way to print things if you don't have a printer at home.

Most of the people I know who tried that in college seemed to always send the first copy to the wrong printer. So you print you report on the physics printer. Walk over. Nothing here. Walk back to dorm. Realize you printed in chem building. Print again in physics lab. Walk over again.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#342

Post by filleduchaos »

jtreminio wrote: post #193
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.

My 13 year old son can no longer play a large part of our Steam library because many of the games he enjoys are 32-bit only (Geometry Dash, for one) and we've upgraded to MacOS Catalina. My old copy of Adobe Photoshop CS6 also cannot be installed because the installer is 32-bit, although there's reports if you had it installed before upgrading you can force it to run. I can rollback my son's laptop, but I am on the n…

As an aside, you can install both Mojave (or High Sierra) and Catalina on a single laptop with minimal friction.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#343

Post by jessaustin »

dmix wrote: post #334

> Regardless, Google is getting savaged by bloggers for killing yet another service, one that most of them never even tried, let alone used regularly. I’ve got to agree here, this feature got replaced by a native ChromeOS printing feature and probably wasn’t being used much. It’s not as bad as others.

I find the service to be very convenient when I have something my parents need to see. It's so much easier to just print the damn thing on their printer, than to walk them through the process of navigating to a particular site, opening a particular attachment on a particular email, etc. That's often when I'm using a chromebook, but not necessarily. All you need is a browser to use this service.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#344

Post by chalst »

iamaelephant wrote: post #323
scarface74 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

Android, Chromebook, the Home series, Maps, Drive, Google Cloud, Docs/Sheets and many more. A lot has happened since Gmail.

Maps is a clear in-house success.

Android and Docs/Drive/Sheets were two acquisitions.

Google is certainly a contender in cloud computing services, but they have a market share of 4% in 2018 for a product category they were one of the first to enter on a big scale, and I don't think niche success is what they are after.

I'm not sure what I think about Chromebooks. I'd like to hope that it has an exciting, Fuchsia-coloured future.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#345

Post by cpeterso »

chalst wrote: post #324
scarface74 wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

Maps counts, I think. But that's going back awhile.

Google Maps was not an in-house project. Google assembled it by acquiring mapping companies Where 2 Technologies and Keyhole.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#346

Post by jefftk »

bouvin wrote: post #329
_wldu wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems pretty bold and visionary to me. They've lucked out with gmail, chrome, golang, android, maps, etc. and they still have the best search in the world. Having a HIPPO tell everyone what to do, how to do it and when is not visionary. Letting engineers do what they want and then making money from the ideas is.

They bought Maps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Maps#History

"Google Maps began as a C++ desktop program at Where 2 Technologies. In October 2004, the company was acquired by Google, which converted it into a web application. After additional acquisitions of a geospatial data visualization company and a realtime traffic analyzer, Google Maps was launched in February 2005."

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#347

Post by president »

davidwparker wrote: post #102

The product has been around 10 years, and they're giving over a year notice before killing it. Sure, Google kills off another product... But the comments here are a bit silly.

I'm not a big proponent of Google but I agree. Most companies jettison under-performing projects but since Google is a juggernaut, I think they get extra flack for it.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#348

Post by jessaustin »

mikelward wrote: post #182
sosuke wrote: post #129

Cloud Print is how I print from my Chromebook right? Do they have a replacement? I use this service daily.

You can use CUPS locally. https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/7225252?hl=en&r...

At that link, we're told to select "Printers" under the heading "Printing". The only item I see under that heading is "Google Cloud Print".

I sort of like this idea, of just making changes and waiting for users to complain when those changes screw them over... I do hope that someone is paying attention to those complaints.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#349

Post by TheRealPomax »

rgbrenner wrote: post #228
areoform wrote: post #62

Google has the corporate equivalent of ADHD. Having talked with ex-googlers and current googlers, the problem seems to be deeply baked into their culture. The incentive structures seem to favor the sexy over the boring, making it much more likely that someone will get promoted for launching products versus growing one. The fix seems to be obvious, create a separate path, a maintenance and growth hacker path, where pe…

Their leadership has no vision. They don't know what to build, where they're going, or what problems they need to solve.. So they encourage these random projects hoping one of their employees will have a vision for them. So the organization just flails around hoping to win the lottery. Each new project is a new lottery ticket.. saving the leadership from making any hard decisions.

Except when it keeps paying off, it's not so much "hoping" as just "being big enough to throw so many things at a wall that has such a high payout, anything sticking means winning the lottery. Again. And again. And again"...

Google can literally _afford_ to kill off highly profitable ventures because something else will make them _more_ money.

(which in itself should be reason enough to judicially split this company up, but that's apparently no longer a thing we do, so here we are)

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#350

Post by mongol »

scarface74 wrote: post #301
konschubert wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is basically a startup builder. And a really good one. How many companies manage to stay so innovative after having found their rainmaker product? However, they should probably sell their successful startups instead of killing them. But I guess they don’t need the money.

How are they a really good startup builder? What have they built in house that has been a success since Gmail? After flailing around for a decade, almost all of their profit is still based on ads. They are less diversified than any of the big tech companies besides Facebook.

Chrome? Chromecast? Chromebook?
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