Let’s see…

HTML exports are not plain text, they include images, graphs, formatting, tables, links, etc. Google docs is a HTML based editor, so its HTML exports look particularly similar to the original editable doc, which users are used to. Other editors have different looks, and their HTML exports look differently.

Just like scam victims are “dumb”, many scammers are also “dumb”, they barely grasp the technical part of what they’re doing, some just follow a script, but most importantly their focus is on social engineering, not on the tech.

How it works is: a “dumb” scammer writes a Google doc with some links to some scam landing page, gets a HTML export, and hosts it on gōogle.com; a “dumb” victim comes by, thinks “oh, this looks similar to the TPS report from last month”, clicks on a link, and proceeds to fill in their company’s banking information… ✨ well, not anymore! Because Google has replaced the actual link with a redirect in the HTML export that they scan and block when reported to be used by scammers. 🎉

Silly measures against silly scammers of silly victims. 🤷