A new employee at Google may need little introduction to other members of the team.  Indeed, depending on how much they love Java, it’s even possible he’ll get asked to sign a few autographs.  That’s because Google has hired James Gosling, the creator of Java.

Gosling left Sun Microsystems in 2010 after working there for about 16 years, and has presumably received all sorts of job offers since.  He acknowledged in a blog post today, “I had a hard time saying ‘no’ to a bunch of other excellent possibilities.”

But Google apparently won out in the end, which says a lot for the company’s appeal.  Gosling also complimented the organization by writing, “I find it odd that this time I’m taking the road more travelled by, but it looks like interesting fun with huge leverage.”

That said, even Gosling doesn’t seem to know what his new job title or focus will be.  It’s possible Google will just let him do whatever he wants, at least for a while.  He wrote, “I don’t know what I’ll be working on.  I expect it’ll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon.”

A few other interesting tidbits about Gosling: he’s earned degrees from the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon.  Furthermore, according to his Wikipedia profile, he was elected to the United States National Academy of Engineering, and in 2007, made an officer of the Order of Canada.

This marks Gosling’s first day working at Google, and a hat tip goes to Stephen Shankland.