In April, we announced Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any app (web, mobile, desktop), on any device, OS, or browser, to print to any printer. Development is progressing quickly and we are now testing the service internally at Google. Those testing it are particularly excited about being able to print from their phones to any printer in the company. We hope to launch the service in the coming months.

Google Cloud Print will work with all printers, including those that are not themselves web-connected (we call these “legacy printers”). However, as we said in the April announcement, the best experience will be with a new generation of web-connected printers that are natively cloud aware. We are working with a number of printer manufacturers to bring cloud print capabilities to their printers. Today, HP announced a full suite of cloud-aware printers ranging from $99 consumer printers to business-oriented printers. This pioneering work is a big enabler for the cloud print vision and all these printers will work with Google Cloud Print out of the box.

Sundar Pichai, VP for Client Products at Google and I joined HP’s announcement today to demonstrate printing from Chrome OS and a mobile phone. We show that Google Cloud Print enables printing from any device, without drivers, and that the print job starts instantly. Check out the video below (I encourage you to watch the full video or if you want the Google segment it begins at 31:37).

Watch live streaming video from hpkickoff at livestream.com

If you are a developer interested in learning more about Google Cloud Print, first review our documentation then keep an eye on check-ins to the chromium.org project. Those who have been following know that we’ve already added preliminary printing support to Chromium OS via Google Cloud Print and our proxy (which enables legacy printers to work with the service) now runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux.
Posted by Mike Jazayeri, Group Product Manager