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Is there any way to send the readers of a Google document to "Viewing" mode instead of the default "Suggesting" mode using a public URL?
With the current behavior it is an administrative burden for the document owner to deny accidental edits by readers that the system sends as suggestions
At this time it's not possible.
The workaround is to make the public URL for view only and that users that want to edit the document request permission to comment.
References:
When creating the link to the Google Doc that you want to share, make sure to set its permission to "Viewer", instead of "Commenter" or "Editor".
(See the documentation.)
If your goal is simply to have the casual user have a view-only mode, and a link you can share that gives that, this can be accomplished by editing the final portion of the URL from e.g. /edit to /preview.
Note that, of course, this doesn't stop even a slightly savvy user from changing it back to /edit, and obtaining whatever permissions that URL would otherwise have granted to them.
This gives a simpler UI (no menus or account selection or the like), with no capacity to do anything but viewing, without changing the URL. If/when that's what you want (disabling edits by default, without truly restricting access), it works great. (At least it did for me, as of the time of this posting.)
You might want to consider publishing the document to the web instead. Click "File" within Google Docs, and then click "Publish to the web".
This is different from just sharing a public to the Google document, as the version that is published to the web hides all Google Docs controls.
