Google Docs may add sync and 'cloud printing' for smartphones

According to reports, the Google Docs source code shows some possible future enhancements to the cloud office suite. Embedded within, the code makes reference to three new features ‘coming soon’, including third-party applications, synchronisation but more crucially, cloud printing.

Cloud printing is not something which has taken off, partly due to the complexity of mismatching drivers across platforms, compatibility, feasibility and security.

But Google Cloud Print will eventually be part of Chrome OS and rolled out across other services like Docs. It will essentially allow users to print to potentially any printer, local or networked, in the world without the need to install any drivers. As CNET point out, ’social printing’ could allow printers around the world to be shared similar to how documents and cloud storage is.

Yet printing from Google Docs is problematic at best. Converting the document to PDF or saving it as the standard Office document to your computer to print from there usually works without a problem. But printing directly from the browser does not guarantee what-you-see-is-what-you-print.

However, for students using mobile devices and non-Windows machines like iPad’s and other tablet devices in the library will be able to print directly without having to use a computer.

Though Google is trying to plug the cloud office market, both Microsoft Office for the desktop and Office Web Apps will be a tough set of products to crack. Windows Live Sync, the replacement for Live Mesh already has Office document synchronisation, which keeps desktop and SkyDrive stored documents updated across all connected machines.

With a Chrome OS netbok expected to be released ‘in time for the holidays’, this could be even more of an incentive to younger consumers wanting a newer, cheaper yet equally productive experience.

Source: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/igeneration/google-docs-may-add-sync-and-cloud-printing-for-smartphones/6642