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Google is working on Google Cloud Print, a service that enables any application (web, desktop, or mobile) on any device to print to any printer. The ideal experience is for your printer to have native support for connecting to cloud print services. Under this model, the printer has no need for a PC connection of any kind or for a print driver. The printer is simply registered with one or more cloud print services and awaits print jobs. Cloud-aware printers do not exist yet.

Google wants users to be able to print to legacy printers via Google Cloud Print. This is accomplished through the use of a proxy, a small piece of software that sits on a PC where the printer is installed. The proxy takes care of registering the printer with Google Cloud Print and awaiting print jobs from the service. When a job arrives, it submits the print job to the printer using the PC operating system’s native print stack and sends job status back to the printer.

http://blog.chromium.org/2010/04/new-approach-to-printing.html