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A longtime Google creative lead is heading to genomics startup Color

Michael Krantz was Google’s first consumer marketing writer 13 years ago.

Michael Krantz

Michael Krantz is leaving his 13-year Google career to head editorial at genomics startup Color.

He’ll be joining former Googlers Othman Laraki and Elad Gil, the company’s co-founders, and Katie Stanton, its CMO, at what is one of several health care tech startups launched by members of the Google diaspora. Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Linus Upson, head of engineering at Alphabet health care subsidiary Verily, are investors.

Krantz joined Google months before the company’s IPO in 2004, as the company’s first consumer marketing writer. He said his role ranged from overseeing April Fools jokes played on users to contributing to less-whimsical company materials, like an op-ed penned by then-CEO Eric Schmidt supporting the legal principles underlying the product now called Google Books.

More recently, he oversaw writing and editing of content for Google’s website explaining user privacy, privacy.google.com.

Before joining Google, Krantz, 54, filled a similar editorial role at a startup, and prior to that he worked as a tech journalist.


This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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