Count me among the skeptics who see Google’s Chrome OS announcement this week as, first and foremost, an effort to induce pain in its longtime rival Microsoft. And a pointless one at that.

Google’s desire to beat Microsoft goes well beyond its other rivalries. Yahoo has long posed a more direct threat to Google’s ad revenue, but the competitive spirit was always a productive one, and the goal seemed to be a better experience for the web user. Twitter’s real-time search looms as a new threat, but Google has nothing but respect for the company. But Microsoft? The overriding goal is to cause pain.