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Google has announced that Google Cloud Print, one of its more useful and interesting services, volition exist close down on Dec 31, 2020. The visitor recommends that people who depend on Google Cloud Print "identify an alternative solution and execute a migration strategy." It's the latest service that the company no longer wants to provide.

Google Deject Print immune you to impress to a local printer from whatever device. Y'all could print from iOS, Android, or a Chrome device. Yous didn't demand native printer support built into a product — if the printer was connected to a local motorcar running Chrome and registered to your account, you could print a document from anywhere. Google claims that information technology's canceling Google Cloud Print because Chrome Os is now improve at handling print jobs. That's not an improvement if you don't use Chrome Os. Android, iOS, and even Windows users who preferred to use Google Cloud Impress as opposed to local press or setting up the printer over a Windows network are now stuck with other approaches.

I genuinely don't understand Google's current production approach, and I'thou non certain Google understands why it keeps getting pushback from the full general spider web customs. I'm non even sure the company understands why people are concerned about Stadia.

How it works (until Dec 31, 2020)

Everyone agrees that Google has the right to kill underperforming services. What'southward frustrating is the speed and frequency with which the Google does this, frequently with no regard for the fact that people genuinely apply and like its software. It's not uncommon to encounter people say they stopped trusting Google afterward information technology killed Google Reader, or that their opinion of the company changed after it forced Google+ integration. In Google'due south world, at that place are no consequences for killing software projects that people genuinely liked. In reality, there are. Bit by bit, a lot of people have become genuinely frustrated with Google'south propensity to kill useful software without explanation or alternative.

Google doesn't seem to respect its users whatever longer, if information technology always did. Google's promise not to combine DoubleClick advertising information with its own information? Gone. The promise not to combine Nest data with Google data? Gone. I remember reading think pieces years agone that warned Google would use the "beta" tag on its products to abolish them abruptly. What does the starting time line of Google's PR say?

"Cloud Print, Google'south cloud-based printing solution that has been in beta since 2010, will no longer be supported equally of December 31, 2020."

Canceling projects and services can have ripple effects that stretch across the install base for the software. Continually killing the products and services that people like using feeds the narrative that your visitor has no interest in maintaining a product for any length of time. It encourages people not to trust you. This was a service people used — I've seen comments from enterprise and educational users who indicated they handled tens of thousands of print jobs per month via GCP. People are already looking for alternatives.

Google has a right to kill whatsoever production it wants, but it's killing its own reputation with the way it treats a lot of these situations.

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