First, there was Gmail. Is the Gbrowser next?

A Google Web browser is the latest in the never-ending speculation about what search leader Google Inc. is going to do next after raising $1.7 billion from its public offering.

The evidence: a spate of high-profile hires, Google's domain-name registration of the gbrowser.com name and a duo of Mozilla Foundation bug reports that name Google.

Following a New York Post story over the weekend about Google's potential jump into the browser wars, Weblogs and a series of media reports this week jumped into the fray.

The speculation about a Google browser dates back even further to July 2003, when bloggers first began posting theories that included a Mozilla-Google marriage.

While all of the signs appear to be compelling signals of an impending Google browser, each also could be explained as an indication of other moves. Search-engine experts and analysts differ on whether to take the browser speculation seriously, though they agree that Google's true post-IPO intentions remain as unclear as ever.

What is clear is that Google has snagged major developers and engineers from such technology vendors as BEA Systems Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. Adam Bosworth in July left his position as chief architect and senior vice president at BEA to join Google. Bosworth is considered one of the top experts in Web services and, in previous roles, was part of the early development of Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

Other recent Google newcomers include Joe Beda, who left Microsoft earlier this month as a lead developer on Longhorn's "Avalon" presentation subsystem, and Joshua Bloch, who had been a distinguished engineer for Java at Sun.

While many of Google's new hires have strong backgrounds in browsers and Web development, they are also just as knowledgeable in areas such as Web services and application development.

Google's official reason for the new hires: "We're always looking for the greatest and brightest minds to join us."

Google in April also registered gbrowser.com, according to the Whois database record. But companies regularly buy domain names to defend against poachers, and an application named gBrowser already exists. It is a Mac OS X-based browser and organizer for digital images.

Read EWeek's article about GBrower at