Google Chrome Printing, again

A little less than a year ago, I looked into the printing capabilities of the new Google (NASDAQ GOOG) Chrome browser (see "Google Chrome Printing") on its first public Beta release. That post was rather inconclusive (though I did follow up with a description and link to a nice little tweak to add a print button to Chrome (see "Google Chrome Printing revisited"). The most notable point about the first post turned out to be the "fine print" controversy that swirled around the browser in its first weeks post-release, driving search engine traffic my way, when what I'd covered was only about the program's printing facility, not Google's purported devious intentions hidden away in Chrome's EULA.

Yesterday, Google Chrome, this time designated a planned new Operating System for Netbooks, burst onto the scene yesterday, there was nary a mention of printing, which is not too surprising. Of course the big angle of the story is the affront to Microsoft (NASDAQ MSFT), who recently fired a surprisingly on-target shot across Google's bow with their Bing search engine.

The most relevant printing and imaging tidbit I have found so far is from the released list of Google Chrome OS partners. Printer leader HP (NYSE HPQ) is on the list along with other PC-and-chip vendors like Acer, ASUS, Freescale, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba, so it's obviously a PC/Netbook play for them, but the one seeming outlier on the list (to me at least) is Adobe (NASDAQ ADBE). This one needs some study! A simple explanation for long-time industry observers could be simply "anything to align against Microsoft" but there is certainly more to it than that!

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