Google Cloud Print is a Google

Google

Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

 service aiming to enable any application (web, desktop, mobile

Smartphone

A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...

) on any device in the network cloud

Cloud computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....

 to print to any printer – without Google having to create and maintain printing subsystems for all the hardware combinations of client devices and printers, and without the users having to install drivers to the client.

Google introduced Cloud Print in April 2010, as a future solution for printing from Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS

Google Chrome OS is a Linux-based operating system designed by Google to work exclusively with web applications. Google announced the operating system on July 7, 2009 and made it an open source project, called Chromium OS, that November....

. Then they made the design document and a preliminary version of the source code available.

Applications can print through a web-based, common print dialog (web UI) or an API. The service then forward the job to the printer registered prior to the service. A new kind of printer will be able to directly connect to Google Cloud Print, current printers will have to connect through a proxy server

Proxy server

In computer networks, a proxy server is a server that acts as an intermediary for requests from clients seeking resources from other servers. A client connects to the proxy server, requesting some service, such as a file, connection, web page, or other resource available from a different server...

.

Google Cloud Print reached beta stage on 25 January 2011. As current printers cannot accept input from a cloud service, Google Chrome

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

 9 contains a "Cloud Print Connector" – the user will only be able to use Cloud Print while the connector is running.

Google Cloud Print was first enabled in Google Chrome

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser developed by Google that uses the WebKit layout engine. It was first released as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on September 2, 2008, and the public stable release was on December 11, 2008. The name is derived from the graphical user interface frame, or...

's development channel; in other builds the service can be enabled through about:flags.