Google: Cloud Printing in the Offing

Google offered an early look at a project it's undertaking which it hopes will ultimately allow users to print from any Internet-connected device to any printer.

The idea basically would eliminate any more need to load drivers on your computer by putting printing "in the cloud," playing off the cloud computing metaphor that's become increasingly widespread in the last couple of years. In theory, this sort of feature would not be limited to computers, but would extend to any device enabled with Google's Chrome operating system that has a connection to the Internet.

Google explains:

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. Using the one component all major devices and operating systems have in common- access to the cloud- today we're introducing some preliminary designs for a project called Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer.

Rather than rely on the local operating system (or drivers) to print, apps can use Google Cloud Print to submit and manage print jobs. Google Cloud Print will then be responsible for sending the print job to the appropriate printer with the particular options the user selected, and returning the job status to the app.

Other Coverage

Google: A New Approach to Printing
ZDNet: Printer drivers: A thing of the past? Google, HP seem to think so
TechCrunch:

Interestingly, Google apparently feels this will become part of a larger trend. In the initial batch of documentation accompanying the announcement, Google said that it expected "other entities" to provide similar cloud print services in the future.