Mobile devices cannot print. A lot of people found this to be a problem, although I am not sure why. Your iPad or your mobile phone is simply not meant for it. You have your laptop/desktop to take care of it. But if you still insist…our good old friend Google has a solution, something called the Google Cloud Print. This will allow you to print from your iPad as well as any other mobile device (smartphone), to a network printer. The printer need not even be in your home, it can be any where on the planet.

Thanks to Google’s Chrome OS. As the operating system will be completely web based, you don’t have to worry about printer drivers. The OS will take care of it. “Since in Google Chrome OS all applications are web apps, we wanted to design a printing experience that would enable web apps to give users the full printing capabilities that native apps have today.” The Google Cloud Print will be a service and a part of the Google Chrome OS, which will allow any application on any device to print on any network-based printer.

It’s a pity that Google Cloud Print is still under development. Still, now we know that there is a solution to the mobile-printing problem. Moreover, Google is making the source code and documentation open to all as a part of the open-source Chromium and Chromium OS projects. That is very generous. “Don’t be evil“…I guess.

[source: blog.chromium.org]