Google Cloud Print follows Reader and Inbox to the trash heap after 2020
Now that Chrome OS has better printer support, the cloud service is shutting down.
If there's anything Google loves as much as launching interesting new projects (say hello to Stadia and Duplex on the web!), it's killing them off after a few years, and now we have an end date for Google Cloud Print. The service launched in 2010 as a way to make printers more accessible for Chrome OS, but 9to5Google points out a post on the support site that indicates its services are no longer needed.
Google correctly notes that it has improved native printer support on Chrome OS, but Cloud Print has been a welcome link from all kinds of devices to the printers we know, love and are endlessly frustrated by when they refuse to work. Its easy link to other services came through in the clutch more than once, but now we're headed back to one-by-one setups and disparate printing apps.
If you've come to rely on the service, then you have until the end of 2020 to work out an alternative, because when the lights come on in 2021 -- "devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print." Cloud Print never even made it out of beta status.
