As technology has evolved over the past 20 years, one theme has been consistently top of mind for both consumers and companies—cutting cords. Smart tech that helps make things more mobile has helped transform modern life and it would be very difficult, to say the least, to even consider going back.
One particular item that has dramatically helped improve efficiencies at home, school, and in the office has been in the area of mobile printing. It used to be if a person wanted to print something, they would have to go to their desktop or laptop computer that was connected to a printer. New advancements in Wi-Fi, cellular networks, laptops, tablet, and smartphones soon made mobile printing not only possible but a practical requirement.
Google was one of the major players involved in cutting the cord to printers. A decade ago, they launched the Google Cloud Print service, which allowed users to print wirelessly to a Google Cloud Print-enabled printer. It would do this through a user’s Google account, which it communicated with over the Internet. In other words, when a user wanted to print from a mobile device, for example, the document was sent via the Internet to Google, which then would send it to the printer.
After 10 years of supporting this service, the company announced in this Google support document that Google Cloud Print will be going away:
“Cloud Print, Google’s cloud-based printing solution that has been in beta since 2010, will no longer be supported as of December 31, 2020. Beginning January 1, 2021, devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print. We recommend that over the next year, you identify an alternative solution and execute a migration strategy.”
We recommend the Mopria Print Service as an alternative to Google Cloud Print. The Mopria Print Service harnesses mobility and enhances print functionalities by sending documents directly to a printer. Unlike Google Cloud Print, native print capability allows applications to print directly to devices via a Wi-Fi Direct peer to peer connection, or over a local area network ‐ without having to go through the cloud. Mopria Print Service is an application designed to leverage this native print capability to provide more enhanced functionality to printers and multifunction products over and above Google’s basic native print services.
With this service, you can connect and print to any Mopria certified printer without additional setup. This means you can print to thousands of different printer models from different manufacturers without having to download any other printing applications or to learn how to use a new interface every time you need to print to a new printer. The Mopria Print Service also allows you to easily print using the Share feature from many of your favorite apps such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest.
Sometimes it’s hard to say goodbye and embrace change, but in this case, Mopria Print Service makes it easy.
