> It's not free to run and it is not generating revenues.

If there's only a few users then it's cheap to run. If there's a lot of users then this is a mountain of bad PR right at the time they are trying to get users to adopt new products (like, say, Stadia). Since all it does is shuffle PDFs & images between endpoints I'm gonna guess this is on the order of basically free to run.

But either way canceling it isn't free, either. I'm arguing the cost of canceling this is far larger than the cost of keeping it running.

I saw it as a counterpoint to AirPrint. I'd like to know what changed that made Google think they don't really need this anymore. Maybe they think WiFi Direct is going to be the future?

Local wifi-based printing and printer discovery (same as Airprint) is already available on Google devices. No Cloudprint required.

But you still need individual print drivers.

Not for CUPS compatible printers.

Also HP provides its own apps and integration for local printing from Chrome: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hp-print-for-chrom...

Google is a large company. Surely the goodwill of keeping it around must mean something? Can’t they take a small loss on one of their “nice-to-have” products?

perhaps even charge people for it? like... it's part of a google business accounts?

unless it's going to bring in multiples of billions of $ per year - and accelerate that growth - they're probably not interested in doing that though.

You mean, have printer manufacturers pay to maintain software that allows users to continue using their old printers? I don't see that happening.