Michael Krantz, a poet-reporter who chronicled the dotcom boom for Time, went native during the bubble years. After a stint at a psychic-hotline operator (don't ask), he joined Google in 2004. Today's his big day.

April Fool's is always a big event for Silicon Valley companies. The annual festival of pranks is a defining event for geek culture. When he worked at Sun Microsystems, colleagues of Eric Schmidt, now Google's CEO, disassembled a Volkswagen Beetle and reassembled it inside his office. Google's pranks over the years have ranged from Google Romance to a toilet-based Internet service provider.

Since he joined, a Google tipster tells us, Krantz has been the wordsmith behind Google's tomfoolery — "Google uses the same weird writer genius every year." He promises the prank will be "very good and totally insane." But isn't the ultimate April Fool's joke here that Google, which worships at the altar of the algorithm, actually employs a veteran of the world's most prestigious magazine?

(Photo by Ted Thai/Life)