Google is spending some of the cash it raised from its IPO on headhunting staff to build a web browser. Staff have already been poached from Microsoft and Sun.

Joshua Bloch, a senior Java developer at Sun, and four people from Microsoft's IE team have all joined the firm in the last few weeks, according (http://www.nypost.com/business/30438.htm) to the New York Post. One of the four, Adam Bosworth, was also a lead developer in the development of Access.

Joe Beda, a developer working on the user interface for Microsoft's Longhorn, has also joined Google. His blog (http://www.eightypercent.net/) refers to the NY Post story, but does not give too many clues to his work at Google: "My only job now is to write code and ship product. That is about all I can say too :) "

Analysts also point to Google's hosting of Mozilla Developer Day for programmers working on the open source browser. Other observers believe the firm is likely to be working on a specialised music search - which could work like Google's image search.

Longer term, the firm could be looking at building a stack of applications that would mirror Larry Ellison's network computer model - an online resource accessed by a browser and a very simple PC. ®

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