Imagine printing an important document from your smartphone on your way to work and finding the printout when you walk in the door. Google has announced a beta or trial run of Google Cloud Print for mobile documents and Gmail.
You can now open a document in Google Docs or an email in Gmail and choose “Print” from the dropdown menu in the top right corner. You can also print some email attachments (such as .pdf or .doc) by clicking the “Print” link that appears next to them.
This feature is for English speaking users in the US for now and will work on most phones that support HTML5, particularly devices running at least Android 2.1 or iOS 3. Users outside the US will have to wait a bit longer.
To connect your printer to Google Cloud Print you will need to install the latest beta version of Google Chrome on a Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7 computer that’s connected to your printer. (Support for Linux and Mac are coming soon.) Once it is installed, enable the Google Cloud Print connector in Google Chrome.
Right now you cannot share your printer with other users. Printers are only accessible to the account that connected them to Google Cloud Print. Google is, however, working on tools that will let you share your printer as easily as you can share files on Google Docs.