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Google Kills Cloud Print

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Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#431

Post by takeda »

canada_dry wrote: post #237
dcchambers wrote: post #169

I am quick to complain when Google kills a useful project - but I am not mad about this. It was originally created because Chromebooks couldn't print. Chromebooks have been able to print natively for a while now so that is no longer needed. They are also giving over a year of warning. That's plenty of time for people to migrate to a new service or figure out how to implement an alternative. Again I know the Google Gr…

> They are also giving over a year of warning. That's plenty of time for people to migrate to a new service or figure out how to implement an alternative. Python 2 would like a word with you.

The problem with python was giving too much time, companies really started thinking about migrating in mid 2019.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#432

Post by tjohns »

vorpalhex wrote: post #425
taco_emoji wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah or have that folder synced to a PC running at home, and then have a service running on that machine that prints anything that shows up in that folder.

Probably easy enough to throw this together in python and host it on your choice of cheap, lower power hardware (Raspberry pi, etc).

It'd also be very trivial to script with a Mac using Folder Actions and a 5 line AppleScript.

(I wish Linux had an equivalent to Folder Actions. They’re really nifty.)

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#433

Post by bayindirh »

taco_emoji wrote: post #395
lonelappde wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the workaround is to send all your printables to a Google drive folder, and then have an app on your devices that send those printables to the printer whenever the printer is visible on wifi. Not sure if Android offers sufficient APIs for that though.

Yeah or have that folder synced to a PC running at home, and then have a service running on that machine that prints anything that shows up in that folder.

Or just a create an e-mail account which is connected to your small server with IMAP with IDLE.

Create a white list, and if mail is coming from a white-listed mail then print the contents, otherwise discard the mail.

This is how my Deskjet 4515 is working besides GCP. It's a pretty neat solution. It even replies with a result e-mail. I hope that HP won't kill its services too. They've already killed the app side, but remote printing is still intact.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#434

Post by undoware »

I'm reading a lot of commenters above chime in with explanations for why it's logistically hard for GOOG to maintain these scut-work keep-lights-on projects because they are so unappealing to their engineers and often involves e.g. boring, non-promotable work. This gave me a Radical idea.

So, I'm one of the lucky few trans folks who have managed to survive and flourish. I'm vividly aware of at least one reservoir of brilliant people who don't get a crack to show the world what they can do.

Instead of just shuttering projects that aren't sexy enough, or are too difficult to maintain, or don't contribute to your OKRs or promotions. Why not give them away? Why not give them to a team of folks with: disabilities, barriers to professional advancement; etc. Google could quality-ensure and knowledge-transfer, meanwhile doing social good, and getting ongoing support for a product that they would otherwise have to add to the increasingly embarrassing pile of abandonware?

I'm not saying it would be easy -- I can think of any number of places where this could go horribly wrong -- but it is quite obviously a step in the right direction to try.

There are lots of great minds that would kill for a chance to do something boring for a change, because financial (and then food, and then shelter) instability is anything but.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#436

Post by freedomben »

paganel wrote: post #369
malvosenior wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's funny because other than Google Street View, I can't think of any "sexy" things Google has done. It's mostly really mundane (if sometimes well executed) products and me-too style copycats of chat products. Oh and of course tons of horrible ad tech stuff. I can't say Google's launched anything exciting in the past decade. If they're shooting for sexy, they're failing miserably.

There was a time when the YouTube “recommended” list was quite good (around 2011-2013), that’s how I discovered lots of very interesting music back then. In the meantime things have gone considerably downhill.

I've noticed this too, and not just with Google. Same with Amazon and many other big tech companies.

I've wondered why, and the only thing I can think of is that they are all jumping to machine learning, and the results are worse than the old-fashioned algorithms.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#437

Post by rc-1140 »

kllrnohj wrote: post #220
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.

Counter-argument: Just let it sit there and keep working? Outside of security patches, if there even are any, there's always the option of "just stop touching it." After all, the whole pitch of elastic compute is you only pay for what you use. It's not like resources are being freed up for other things here. The software industry is always on this treadmill of churn, leading to stable products continuing to have a co…

A lot of the responses to the parent are things along the lines of "well it needs to be owned by a team" and all the usual valid cost-related reasons why [x] can't be maintained, and of course that doing so is boring.

Isn't this the kind of project that should be reserved for people in explicit learning states such as (for example) novice hires, new hires, and aspiring mangers who haven't done any management before? It doesn't really have burning deadlines, it's not a frontline project but it's still something that can be referenced as work with impact, there's still the technical challenge of keeping it functional as the years go by, and eventually it will actually be old enough to be taken out back and deprecated. If any company could do something like this with their various projects as well as culture, I'm pretty sure Google could.

Of course there are probably a bunch of problems with this idea, but it seems to be more preferable in contrast to just axing a product that a not-insignificant number of people found useful and going "NEED. NEW. SHINY. TOY. MUST MAKE MONEY NOW!"

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#438

Post by mburns »

scarface74 wrote: post #374
chalst wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-col…

Isn’t it telling that a former bookseller was able to execute better in the cloud market than Google?

Not really, no.

Re: Google Kills Cloud Print

#439

Post by scarface74 »

kevinslashslash wrote: post #409
scarface74 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome was split off from WebKit, Android was acquired. They didn’t build either from scratch. Compare their success to failure ratio to Apple, Amazon and Microsoft.

And Apple bought NeXT which is what macOS and iOS are based off of. A purity contest of "from scratch" isn't really relevant. Google clearly put, and continues to put, a lot of serious technical work into Chrome and Android which is reflected in their success.

Chrome isn’t a “success” because of any technical work. It’s a success because Google hocked it on their home page.

How is Chrome anymore of technical success than other browsers?

As far as Android, it came out in the Oracle trial that it only made about $22 billion in profit during its entire existence and the entire ecosystem is still a mess as far as security and updates compared to Windows - ie where one company controls the operating system and licenses it to other OEMs.

Not to mention that the entire Android market is a profit less race to the bottom for all of the manufacturers.

All that being said, Google still derives almost all of its profit from ads compared to Apple, Microsoft and Amazon who have had far more success in introducing diversified products.

But if Google’s failures can be attributed to a lack of leadership, most of Apple’s current success wasn’t the result of the NeXT acquisition. It was the result of bringing its founder back.

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