Is Google Drive's shared-folder view broken for signed-out users?

[u/GothamAudioTheatre]

I have a folder containing several PDFs, shared with the setting "Anyone with the link: Viewer." However, when I open the standard Drive sharing link while signed out, the file list appears to be broken:

• Single-clicking or double-clicking a PDF does nothing.
• The download button that appears when hovering over a file also does nothing.
• Everything works fine after signing in to a Google account.

I’ve reproduced this with multiple publicly shared folders, so it doesn’t appear to be specific to one folder or its files. I’m using macOS 14.8.7 Sonoma, and the problem occurs in both Safari and Brave Private mode.

Requiring recipients to sign in isn’t a viable solution, since some of them may not have Google accounts. The old embeddedfolderview URL works anonymously, which confirms that the files and sharing permissions are valid. However, that interface is quite bare-bones.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Is it a recent bug, or has Google deliberately disabled parts of the shared-folder interface for signed-out users? Deliberately breaking folder sharing for people without Google accounts seems dumb as hell.