Joe Kraus–the longtime Silicon Valley entrepreneur who sold his most recent start-up, JotSpot, to Google in 2006 and has been a director of product management since–has moved to its Google Ventures unit as a partner, said several sources.

Sources added that Kraus (pictured above) is likely to be the first of several well-known appointments at the relatively new venture arm of the search giant.

Google (GOOG) announced its VC play in March and said the fund will invest $100 million in “exceptional: start-ups over the next year.

“We’ll be focusing on early stage investments across a diverse range of industries, including consumer Internet, software, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and, no doubt, other areas we haven’t thought of yet,” Managing Partners Rich Miner and Bill Maris explained in a blog post when Google Ventures debuted. “Central to our effort will be our fellow Googlers, whom we view as a critically important resource to help educate us about potential investments areas and evaluate specific companies.”

Well, that now apparently means Kraus, a serial