Some little birds whispered in the Wall Street Journal’s ear and got it to report that Google, which usually just buys start-ups, now wants to set up a venture arm a la Intel Capital, leaving the reader to imagine where the money would go, what stage companies might catch its eye and what strings it might impose.

The Journal toys with the idea that the VC unit could help it expand its online software cloud.

Supposedly the VC idea isn’t cast in stone, but the paper says Google’s chief legal officer and senior VP of corporate development David Drummond has been tapped to lead the operation and Google has hired William Maris, a former business colleague of Google wife Anne Wojcicki, who married Sergey Brin last year, to pull things together.

According to Reuters Maris has a degree in neuroscience, worked with Wojcicki at Catalytic Health, a health investment fund, created his own web hosting company, Burlee.com, and managed some investments for the Wallenberg fortune.

Without having a formal VC unit, Google has managed to invest money where its wide-ranging interests lie like in Current Communications, the Internet-over-power lines company, and Meraki, the wireless Internet device maker, and its earmarked hundreds of million for save-the-world renewable energy projects via its philanthropic Google.org.

Google also has Gadget Ventures, the pilot program putting $100,000 into developers who are trying to build a business around the gadgets platform.