Most of the background information is for the GM, to give him a sense of the story, the NPC motivations, and so on.
Most APs will provide ways for the players to learn some of this information through the course of the campaign (certain NPCs might be able to provide some tidbits, and library research might provide other tidbits), but beyond that they wouldn't learn it.
You're citing one of my main 'regrets' of the AP -- they give you these wonderful background stories to help you better-roleplay the NPCs, but the players rarely learn them.
I have a tendency to let my players read the AP post-campaign so they can compare 'what happened' to what was written. They love it, but you have to be careful to keep them from reading any spoilers.
As mentioned, understanding the motivations of the NPCs and antagonists you are playing the part of is probably the most important reason for the background information.
Internalizing and processing all that information lets you, as the GM, breath life into the world your PCs are inhabiting. Being able to drop hints from key NPCs during monologues or conversations may give the players something to research later on to even further immerse them in the larger world. It also allows the players to actively participate in conversations, giving them hooks to follow through with rather than the NPC just giving them an information dump. The NPC may even wish to keep some of that information hidden from the PCs, but social skills like Sense Motive, Intimidate, Bluff, and Diplomacy can be used to add some active participation beyond just asking questions. Letting the players roll a couple of times during a conversation with a particularly cunning or canny NPC lets them feel they earned the information, similar to getting loot off monsters, and hopefully making it a more immersive and engaging experience.
PCs with Knowledge skills (Local, Nobility, Geography, History, etc.) might even know some background information outright (after an appropriate skill check), so the extensive campaign background allows you to tailor how much to impart to the PCs who make a particularly good roll vs a poor one. The players don't need all this information when they start playing, but when a topic is mentioned that a PC may know something about, this makes an easy way for the DM to let the players in on some of that knowledge. This is a good way to make the players feel that their PCs don't exist in a vacuum and that the world they are in has a tangible history.
In the end, there will always be pieces of information that can't be imparted to the PCs, outside of divination magic or speak with dead. But when your PCs are ambushed by a starving band of orcs, you'll be ready when they question the spirit of the raging orc barbarian that they just killed who was fleeing from his ancestral home by the encroachment of a larger evil that had him enthralled by magic for months and which he only escaped from by wearing a pendent made of obsidian inscribed with strange runes.
Creative Director
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You're citing one of my main 'regrets' of the AP -- they give you these wonderful background stories to help you better-roleplay the NPCs, but the players rarely learn them.
I have a tendency to let my players read the AP post-campaign so they can compare 'what happened' to what was written. They love it, but you have to be careful to keep them from reading any spoilers.
In fact, this isn't the intended case.
We give that much background for ALL the NPCs and history of the world because in any one game, we can't predict what the player characters will do.
If you don't have anyone in a group who can cast charm person, you my well have a group that goes through the entire adventure wihtout learning anything about the NPCs they fight. But if you do, eventually a PC is going to successfully charm an NPC. We (and you the GM) don't know which NPC or when that will happen... so for all the more important NPCs, we give personality and history stuff.
As for how the PCs can learn background information... Knowledge checks and by talking to knowledgable NPCs. There's a sage, Brodert Quink, in Sandpoint who's more or less in town for this exact purpose—if the PCs don't figure something out that you want them to know about Thassilon, Brodert can tell them in the form of a theory or guess or just plain knowledge. Different NPC allies in different specializations can tell them more. Shalelu and goblins, for example.
And if your players have Knowledge checks, when they start making them, having all that background information at your disposal lets you as the GM respond to those checks in a dynamic way that makes sense for whatever the PC is asking about.
If you're lucky and fortunate enough to have a group who is very interested in finding out the background info of an adventure, LET THEM. They have skills (Diplomacy, Knowledge, etc.) and spells (divination, commune, charm person, legend lore) that allow them to learn; reward the curious players for using those tools by letting them see the details. Just because we don't provide Knowledge check tables for every possible bit of lore (no room to do that in print) doesn't mean the PCs can't learn.
What James said.
I've been ruthlessly exploiting Brodert's existence, and turned him into quite the quirky character in my campaign. But Larz Rovanky is turning more and more important, for reasons totally unknown to me. So yep, it depends on which NPCs your characters take an interest in, and you've got info on (almost) all of 'em.
I love the APs for precisely this reason. I can build a dungeon crawl myself. It's a heck of a lot harder to build an interesting town that the PCs will care about, or make memorable villains with deep backgrounds. (Our party was in near-tears when they decided that Nualia was irredeemable, because they knew her background story.)