I agree, very vehemently. This feature is only convenient for 5% of the pages that my organization ever publishes. 95% of the time, all we need is a simple hyperlink. It's very annoying to have to take extra steps just to prevent a google doc link from exploding into a giant embedded document macro.
(Sorry for the long essay below... I could write a whole book weird little issues that I've come across in my time as an administrator, haha)
It's especially irritating because it adds significant friction to my organization's documentation workflow. For each project, we have a templated project reference page that has a table where everyone adds links or file paths for various project deliverables (which includes external files that can't or shouldn't be uploaded to Confluence). Users are supposed to edit the page to add their deliverable to the table along with any relevant notes, so throughout the project all of the files & documents you need are assembled in one easy central list.
It's an extremely simple process... UNTIL someone needs to add a google docs link. The behavior of this macro just confuses them. Most of the time, when they add the link to the table they just leave the embedded macro as-is because it's not obvious how to fix it and they don't have the time to fiddle around with it. Plus, they are very basic users who are not familiar with all the little tips and tricks to prevent weird automated behavior in the editor (and I would argue - they shouldn't have to be. Teaching users a bunch of quirky finicky workarounds for simple tasks just distracts from the real issue, which is this macro has bad user experience).
The end result is we now have project pages with tables that are riddled with awkwardly embedded google docs, which makes the table appear very sloppy and hard to read.
What this macro SHOULD do is have a simple option for whether to show the normal hyperlink, or whether to convert it into a fully embedded google doc. Ideally, when a user pastes a google docs link it should by default appear like an inline hyperlink, and then the user can click on it and consciously decide whether to choose the option to embed it.
I'm on Confluence Cloud, btw. Not sure if it's exactly the same in Server.
This is just one example of how the Confluence Cloud editor is full of misguided over-simplification and over-automation. I think the intent was to make fancy embeds extremely easy, but all it does is ruin page layouts and cause bewilderment. Users aren't too stupid to choose between a hyperlink and a fully embedded document, and they shouldn't need to figure out mysterious tricks just to make a text hyperlink for the sake of this ONE type of web address. Just make it logical.
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Also related to this - because of this automated behavior, users also get confused when the link shows up with a little "lock" symbol and says you must be signed into google to see the link preview. They are always signed into google, but the problem is that if a document has special access permissions (which is often), they have to go through the extra step of making sure their Confluence and Google accounts are connected. It's not obvious what the problem is, though, and they just get worried that they somehow did something wrong. It's so unnecessary.
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