18 September 2026

A document somebody shared with you is a document

The page a share link opens now carries the same card every other screen puts above a document — the name, what it weighs, when it was made, and the counts — instead of a line of small print. Save a copy puts it on your own account, Share publishes that copy, and Copy Markdown takes the text. Signed out, those buttons open the sign-in dialog rather than sitting there disabled.

A link handed to somebody should open the document, not the product. That is why this page has no history, no dropzone and no account of its own — and for a while it took the idea too far: what it put above the document was a line of small print, which read as a preview of something rather than as the thing itself.

The same card as everywhere else

Above the document now: its name, a badge saying it was shared with you, what it weighs, when it was converted, and its word, heading and table counts. It is the card the converter puts above a document it has just made, because it is the same object, and a reader deciding whether to keep something wants the same facts an owner does.

The verbs are what differ

Save a copy puts it on your own account, and it is a copy: the sender's document stays theirs and nothing you do here reaches it. Share is about that copy, so pressing it saves one first rather than offering to republish somebody else's document. Copy Markdown takes the text, and Download gives you a self-contained .html file that opens anywhere with no connection.

Signed out, none of those sit there disabled explaining themselves: they open the sign-in dialog, because somebody who has just pressed Save has already said what they want. The dialog, not straight to Google — whoever was sent the link was sent it at an address that may well not be a Google account.

Two pages, and which one you get

A link that anybody may open is /s/<token>, rendered by the server, running no script, and cacheable — which is what keeps a popular document off the database. A document shared with named addresses cannot be handed to a reader nobody has identified, so that link sends you to /open/<token>, the app's own view, which knows how to ask you to sign in as the address it was shared with.

Neither is indexed. Both carry a "Report this document" link at the foot, and a link that was never shared or has since been revoked says so rather than showing a stale page.