When you say "internal Google project", do you mean hired a guy who used code from his previous company and slapped the name "Orkut" on it?

Via Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut

"In late June 2004, Affinity Engines filed suit against Google, claiming that Orkut Buyukkokten and Google based Orkut on inCircle code.[ambiguous] Originally the Orkut community was felt to be elitist, because its membership was by invitation only. At the end of July 2004 Orkut surpassed the 1,000,000 member mark and by the following September it had surpassed 2,000,000. As of August 2007, the number of members equated to over 67,000,000 users."

I did not know that. I had thought it was an external buy.