Perhaps I'm missing something but wasn't the "publishing documents on the internet" problem solved long ago by The World Wide Web? Or is the purpose of Scribd to recreate the magical experience of reading various dead tree formats, even though it doesn't actually do that?

Every time there's a Scribd-related post on HN, the comments are negative and repetitive. I don't use the service either, but:

1. It's successful, at least in terms of traffic, so it's worth watching and perhaps learning from.

2. The web hasn't obliterated the old document formats (yet). Not everyone that has content in those formats has the time or inclination to replicate the layout in HTML, so Scribd is making distribution easier for them. It may not be solving your problem but it is solving some people's problem.

People here usually have a soft spot for YC funded startups; not sure why Scribd's treated like the disowned member of the family.

Hopefully they will use the money from this deal to turn their website into something that users don't hate.

"But these options aren’t conducive to sharing content that you’ve discovered on the web, as they don’t allow your to embed them in your blogs and websites."

False. The Google Book Search API allows you to do precisely that: http://code.google.com/apis/books/

Scribd allows user uploads though, and that seems to be their biggest differentiator right now.

Why does there seem to be such anti-Scribd sentiment here?

Everytime I see a Scribd doc I run away like if I saw the devil.

HTML does a better job.