It had to come sooner or later. After doing really well for its Android OS for mobile phones, and not too bad for the Chrome Web browser (with 30 million users), Google unveiled its Chrome OS for Netbooks late yesterday to a flurry of excitement online.

The free OS is meant to make apps on the Net run more smoothly, when you are at a cafe, say, getting documents on your Gmail and Google Docs. A rich experience – something you get on a “bloated” install of Microsoft Office or indeed Open Office – is what Google has been trying to offer over the Net with its Chrome browser and now the Chrome OS.

The idea is to use the two pieces of software to run Web-based applications that were probably not able run as well or with as much bells and whistles as before. To understand this, just look to Google Docs and you’ll see why it’s a great alternative – but not a replacement – for software you install on your PC.

That’s also why the initial excitement over the Chrome OS launch has quickly followed with questions, as the media and analysts begin to pick apart what the most-loved tech company is doing to enter a marketplace dominated by the most-unloved of them all – Microsoft.