1) You want people to eventually download and re-edit, but in the mean time (or for some people) you just want to allow them to see it in their browser.
2) The adobe pdf plug-in is less than spectacular, even if you do go to all the trouble to export your office docs to pdf.
3) I'm not sure, but the pdf conversion from the 3 Office document formats must be fairly lossy. Then again, I don't know that the office document conversion to ipaper is any better.
4) The user might not have Office or a suitable clone handy.
Also, this is only slightly related to what you're saying, but you could imagine Scribd supporting more obscure document formats which are not readily converted to pdf's.
1) You want people to eventually download and re-edit, but in the mean time (or for some people) you just want to allow them to see it in their browser. 2) The adobe pdf plug-in is less than spectacular, even if you do go to all the trouble to export your office docs to pdf. 3) I'm not sure, but the pdf conversion from the 3 Office document formats must be fairly lossy. Then again, I don't know that the office document conversion to ipaper is any better. 4) The user might not have Office or a suitable clone handy.
Also, this is only slightly related to what you're saying, but you could imagine Scribd supporting more obscure document formats which are not readily converted to pdf's.