Google’s strategy sounds good but contains multiple contradictions.

Google (GOOG) proceeded this past week with the second announcement of its Chrome OS. The first one took place on July 7, 2009, and with the ship date a year away, we can look forward to still more launch events: a beta launch event, a couple more for applications, and partnership agreements before the Big One, in time for the 2010 holidays shopping season. So goes this industry and its posturing ways.

Did we learn something new?

On the product itself, not really. On Google’s intentions, official or real, a little bit more or, perhaps, a tad less.

In two past columns, “Chrome-Plated Linux or Microsoft 2.0” and “Trojan Horse: Web Apps,” we discussed the product itself—Google’s Chrome browser sitting on a Linux-derived OS kernel—and, more importantly, Google’s goal: killing the Microsoft (MSFT) earnings-engine with a new generation of applications displacing Office.

As we know, most of Microsoft’s earnings and cash generation (“only” $5 billion in additional cash for the past year) come from the Windows + Office + Exchange triad. We know Google’s Web apps like Documents, Presentation, and Spreadsheets. For Microsoft, the most dangerous part is something called Google Gears, or offline mode on our PCs and Macs. For example, Gmail can work offline with a local copy of your mail; when the connection is restored, everything syncs back with the Cloud. The idea isn’t new; Microsoft’s Outlook has been providing such a dual online/offline arrangement for years—it’s called the Cache mode. So these dual-mode Google Apps are the Microsoft Office killer and, as a result, the end of the Microsoft money machine.

In theory. The rest, as we like to joke, is a “mere matter of implementation.”