I am not a fan of 'the Cloud', in this case cloud printing, for two reasons;
1. What are you supposed to do when your Internet connection is down, be
that internal network issue or ISP?
2. I will not upload my documents to a third party for /any/ reason,
certainly not just because 'they want them' which as far as I can see is
the only reason to upload file for printing.
Those are excellent reasons.
That second point, though - there is another reason. People's habits have changed, printing from your home computer to your home printer doesn't suit everyone. Cloud printing, in several forms, allows people to use any device to print to that printer, from the home or from t'other side of the internet. Print from your phone? Done. Print whilst you're at a meeting elsewhere in the country? Done. Print something whilst you're on holiday in Honolulu? Done.
And because tech users are a little touchy about routers opening random inbound ports from the internet onto our network (upnp, how we hate you so) , the only way they can achieve these miracles is by using their servers to buffer print jobs, and have the printer come and fetch them. That allows them to advertise printers that do stuff others can't, and people buy them.
So there are legitimate reasons for that. Honestly, I doubt if they spend their days sniggering at your shopping lists, but some scepticism is certainly encouraged if you're printing anything you'd prefer others not to see.
That said, I agree with you and would not enable such a feature, and would return any printer that required it. I've never used any of those methods I describe, but that's why this is a thing, and is likely to remain a thing.
