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Goodbye Google Cloud Print

The Last Paper Jam

Article from ADMIN 58/2020

By Carsten Mickeleit

With the discontinuation of Google Cloud Print, we look at printing going forward in the enterprise.

Google Cloud Print could go down in history as the product with the longest beta phase – 10 years. At the end of 2019, Google announced that it was discontinuing its print service at the end of 2020. Users and printer manufacturers are probably equally disgruntled, because Google Cloud Print support is now a standard feature of many printers and will simply not work starting in 2021, prompting the need to put a similar printing environment on a new footing.

Google Cloud Print is leaving the stage at a time when cloud printing is becoming increasingly important in the enterprise. More than ever before, companies are ready to move their processes to the cloud. IT managers are confronted with new and higher compliance, security, and data protection requirements in their own data centers, which they are increasingly unable to meet. However, the more processes migrate to the cloud, the more likely plain vanilla on-premises processes will become disruptive.

As one of the most cost-intensive and error-prone processes, printing offers considerable potential. One good thing about the discontinuation of Google Cloud Print (GCP): Its end frees up space for new solutions. Providers of comparable tools (Figure 1) no longer face a cross-funded, free service from a market giant. It is to be hoped that GCP alternatives will develop in an environment of fair competition.

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