And another Google Service is biting the dust...

[wraith808]

From: https://arstechnica....-google-cloud-print/

Google is killing Google Cloud Print
After a decade of making printing easy, Google just isn't interested anymore.

Cloud Print is—well, was—pretty cool. Printers are some of the dumbest, most archaic "tech" devices on Earth, but Cloud Print was the missing link, allowing your dumb printer to work with more modern devices. You could print from Chrome and Chrome OS, or print from a phone, or even print remotely over the Internet. The idea was that the Cloud Print server was built into every copy of the Chrome browser, and your printer probably connected to a computer running Chrome at some point, either over a local network or USB cable. Once your printer hit a computer running Chrome and you registered it to your Google account, Google took care of the rest. The printer was accessible from pretty much anywhere via your Google account, as long as the local computer was turned on. Chrome OS and Chrome on the desktop would automatically list Cloud Print printers alongside your local ones. Android supported cloud print throughout the operating system, and on iOS, Cloud Print was built into Gmail, Chrome, and the whole Google Docs suite.


Cloud Print was a huge success, as far as printing services go, and it even ended up being built-in to traditional printers. Google has a list of hundreds of cloud-ready printer models that connect directly to Google's service, no intermediate computer needed. So much for that.

More at link.

[lanux128]

>> Let's make a list...
>> What's that? They have made one already?

• https://killedbygoogle.com/
• https://gcemetery.co/

[IainB]

@lanux128: Thanks for the links to those lists. Makes for pretty depressing reading, sure, but some time ago (it was during the WAVE fiasco) I belatedly twigged to the fact that whatever new service they were offering - no matter how good/useful or interesting it might seem - it was merely some kind of a BS market testing device to see what behaviours (demand, usage, types of usage patterns, etc.) it might trigger. They were always in Beta, so I have stopped using any of their products except Gmail, and now have a full backup strategy for when that gets killed (following the trend).
It's an interesting conundrum: What do you do with your research results when they reflect that your lab rats have awareness and start to realise they're being manipulated, tested and observed and so change their behaviours accordingly? Maybe you just focus on those lab rats that haven't evinced any sense of awareness yet, I don't know.

Sorry to use a cliché, but I found the potential for WAVE to be quite "exciting" from an information management and collaboration perspective.  I found Web Hosting in Google Drive (2012 - 2016) particularly useful too, but stopped using it before I became dependent on it, assuming it would be killed off before long (it was). The main problems for users of any/most web or cloud-based services is that one generally has real risks to deal with:

• Lack of security of access and control.
• Lack of certainty that the service has any longevity for one's business needs - e.g., lack of certainty that the host or supplier will be in business 2 years from now to support the service.
• Lack of full ability for backup/restore, or migration.

Addressing mitigation of these risks would seem to be well-nigh impossible, when the service provider isn't showing all their cards and motivations - and there could be a relatively high price tag attached to mitigation anyway.

I used to be what is termed "an early adopter", but am now become a somewhat jaundiced late adopter. 

We're all mostly unpaid beta-testers for Microsoft anyway. That was so with DOS, and now Windows 10.

[Shades]

Sorry to use a cliché, but I found the potential for WAVE to be quite "exciting" from an information management and collaboration perspective.

-IainB (November 28, 2019, 05:15 PM)

"Funny" thing is that Google Wave was laughed away, yet years later Slack/Microsoft Teams and similar software exists that does practically the same. And these are heralded. Consumers as a group really have no clue about recognizing something useful the moment it is presented to them. And Google has no clue about what revenue sources have a real chance or use in the long run to provide (paid for) services for that same group of consumers. Perhaps then Google wouldn't have to rely so much on ad revenue alone. Diversifying really isn't their strong suit, even though they try and wasting money by truckloads in the process.

Wave could have had years of extra development to get kinks out, before Slack was even a "twinkle in the eye" of its creator(s). I too had high hopes for Wave when it came out.