In Google Docs, publishing allows you to make your document available to the whole world. Once you publish your document, spreadsheet, or presentation to a webpage, you get a URL that you can share with anyone you choose.
Even after you publish your documents, spreadsheets or presentations, they won't appear in the Google search index; however, other search engines may potentially index published docs.
To publish your documents, click the Share drop-down menu on the top right and choose Publish as webpage. Then, click Publish document (Publish now in Spreadsheets.)
If you send the URL of the published version of your document, spreadsheet, or presentation to collaborators, they won't be able to make any edits. This is what they'll see:
- Documents: a version with no toolbar available.
- Spreadsheets: no toolbar available. Viewers will be able to see charts, cell formatting, and the values of cells; they won't be able to view or edit formulas.
- Presentations: view-only version or in presentation mode (full-screen slides).
Note: it's not possible to publish PDFs.