The standard path: just upload the .docx to Google Drive

Open Google Drive, click + New → File upload, select your .docx. Once uploaded, right-click → Open with → Google Docs. Google converts the .docx to native Docs format on the fly. Fidelity is high for most documents, lossy for complex layouts (footnotes, advanced typography, certain table features). For 95% of "Word to Google Docs" needs, this is the answer — no third-party tool required.

The mdisbetter path: Word → Markdown → Google Docs (or skip Docs entirely)

If your endgame is AI input, a static site, or a Markdown-native docs platform (Notion, Obsidian, Coda), there's no reason to go through Google Docs at all. Convert the Word document to Markdown directly with mdisbetter — that's your final output. If you do need it in Google Docs after, paste the Markdown into Google Docs (Tools → Preferences → enable Markdown shortcuts, then paste — Docs formats it natively).

When Markdown intermediate is genuinely better

Cleaner output than Google's .docx import (which sometimes mangles complex tables and footnotes). No Google account permissions required. Markdown is portable across any docs platform later — Notion, Obsidian, Confluence, etc. all natively import Markdown. For "I just need to share/edit collaboratively", upload the .docx directly to Drive; for "I want clean structured output for downstream tools", go via Markdown.