I sometimes get linked google docs links and would like to view them without visiting a google site directly.
Afaik, no
This is not really a useful answer, but its an option —
make a scary looking autoreply; “the link you have sent is has been detected as mailware and has been blocked”. Just play dumb and ask for a PDF/some other means of file transfer.
That’s a very useful workaround
Yeah you’re right that’s not a useful answer. This question in particular was also prompted by being linked a public resource, so even if I got someone else to download it for me and send it to me as a .ods file (it was a Google Sheets link specifically), that would just be offloading who visits the google site to someone else. Ie using your friend as a proxy. Which may be fine if you just don’t want to visit the site yourself and that’s your only objection, but I am pretty easily traceable to the type of friend who would send me a google docs link, and it definitely doesn’t offer the same anonymity as a proxy like Piped which is used by a lot of people (as opposed to a proxy like my friend, a proxy which is only used by one person…)
I’m not familiar with such solutions, but I wouldn’t get your hopes high, as Google Docs is not a collection of publicly available files (like YouTube), rather files closed behind different accesses.
Based on this, depending on how a file is shared with you, you could be asked to authenticate yourself somehow. Without the deeper understanding of your situation, I can only think of one solution: downloading these files with manipulating the links, like this for example (if they are public): https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9045392/getting-the-download-link-for-a-public-google-docs-file?rq=1
If they are not public, I think you still have the chance to do this, but I can’t see any steps around authenticating with Google in their own site. And then download the file.
I’m not aware of any Google Docs frontends. But maybe a dummy Google account using a private window with ad-blocking and tracker-blocking enabled would work?
Even when using open source alternatives the server know your IP and you don’t know what they are going to do.
They were asking about a proxy, not a frontend. Like, invidious and piped are YouTube frontends, but both of them has a proxy feature, always-on with piped, which makes the frontend proxy all requests (even video segments) through the server of your choice.
So with a proxy service, google will not see your IP, unless the proxy you use is a mole.
Not a proxy, but cryptpad is a fairly good alternative.
What are you trying to achieve that wouldn’t be achieved with a VPN and a private browser session?
