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Comment by jwr | Hacker News Reader

I believe the purpose is to "drive traffic", "build user base", "engage users", and later "monetize". Without supplying much value in the process, which is why we are annoyed.

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There is a purpose. Several sites that depend on document submissions of different formats (like pdfs, ppts, word docs, etc.) might need an efficient way to render these document previews on a page. Those sites can use an api from scribd, documentcloud, etc. to display these files inline.

There is a certain very valid and extremely useful use case to sites like this, of course, linking random internet users to pdfs through them shouldn't be one of them ;)

I am in no way affiliated with any of these services, just came across this use case while building something for someone in the past.

I think that's not doing DocumentCloud justice. While I realize this is a precarious argument, I find it hard to believe that Jeremy Ashkenas, an active HN member, creator of Backbone and CoffeeScript, and someone I've come to respect, would work for a company that offers no value.

I have a lot of respect for Jeremy, but respect (like trust) is not transitive.

I see little value in taking a PDF and making it available as images online. Is there really a web browser that cannot display a PDF?

Maybe you're right, but in this case I do think it is somewhat transitive. Based on what I know about Jeremy, I'm inclined to think he is successful enough work somewhere that he considers 'worthy'. But I'm not certain enough to strongly argue this point :-).

You can't embed a PDF in a web page without some solution like this.

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