View and Share PDFs with Google Docs

Apparently, you can now upload PDFs (and in the future, possibly any other file type) on everyone’s favorite cloud computing office suite, Google Docs. You see, they rolled out a new interface recently, and it looks one step closer to an online storage service. The “items by type” menu replaced “PDFs” with “Files”, suggesting that Google Docs will allow users to upload any type of files.

Google Docs also added the advanced search options that are available in Gmail:

* exact phrase matching (“todo list”)
* negative matching (summer -trip)
* disjunctive matching (budget OR invoice)
* built-in labels (is:starred, is:hidden)
* collaborators: to find the documents shared by Michael Robinson, you need to search for: from:michaelr@gmail.com, assuming that’s his email address. The problem is that you need to know the email address, since the operator doesn’t support (partial) names.

At some point in the near future, Google Docs will allow you to upload any type of files. Some of the files can be edited, other files can be previewed online, while the rest of them are only stored online. For example, PDF files can’t be edited online, but you can view them and share them.

It will be interesting to see how Google Docs integrates with other Google services that store files (Gmail, Picasa Web Albums, YouTube) and to find the free quota limits.

But what you want to know is how to share PDF files in Google Docs. You can now publish a PDF file by clicking on “Share”, selecting “Get the link to share” and checking “Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)”. While the file becomes publicly available, you still need to log in using a Google Account, despite Google’s claim that no sign-in is required.