So, other than the ads which are trivial to ignore as you scan the page, the scribd experience is far better. The fonts are much better and you don't get blurry pages on your scroll down as Google Docs `sharpens' things up.
And the font rendering. God the font rendering is so much better on scribd. But that's because it uses CSS font-faces.
Anyway, the better reading experience on scribd is exactly why I asked :) But I can see why one might consider the Google Docs one `better' in some ways.
I agree the fonts are better on scribd, but don't brush off the ads. I find this very challenging to read with the ads moving around & the toolbar at the bottom sliding in and out. Additionally, scribd opens the document at a zoom level too small to read. When I click the zoom button, the ads overlap the document and I can't read it. If I click the fullscreen button the scrolling is so jerky its very hard to consume. So at least for me, the reading experience in Google Docs is superior to Scribd.
BTW this is on Chrome 12.0.742.60 on a new MBP. Perhaps scribd is better optimized for other browsers/platforms.
Ah, ok. Interesting. Yeah, I'm hitting it up on Safari 5, and zooming worked fine (I just used the browser zoom, though now I checked the Scribd zoom and things are working too). And the scrolling works fine...
All in all, strange, given that I'm on an 8-month-old iMac, which shouldn't be that far off from your MBP. Maybe it's just the bleeding-edge Chrome that's the issue.
Regardless, if that's how it's working for ya, I totally get it :)