It was announced today by executive chairman Eric Schmidt of Alphabet that Google Ideas web and policy think tank based in New York, is making its transformation into a technology incubator which is now called Jigsaw.
According to a Medium Schmidt had posted stating that, Jigsaw is investing the build of technology to address the world's toughest geopolitical problems, from preventing online censorship to countering violent extremism and to further more pierce through access of information associated with cyberattacks.
Schmidt wrote, "For one thing, the new name acknowledges that the world is a complex puzzle of physical and digital challenges. For another, it reflects our belief that collaborative problem-solving yields the best solutions,"
Jared Cohen's former member of US State Department's Policy Planning Staff will be leading Jigsaw, and who's also carried out Google Ideas since it started in 2010, and will continue to advise Schmidt.
Cohen's relation to Google fostered when he decided to create the "think/do tank" from an idea he and Schmidt both had during a conversation at a technology delegation in 2009, where then Cohen took to Iraq. Google Ideas managed to expand its affairs globally, where once the activist Julian Assange criticized Google Ideas for what he called a regime change.
In addition Schmidt stated, "We created Google Ideas five years ago as an in-house think tank to explore how technology might help the next five billion people coming online for the first time. Many of the newest Internet users are coming online in societies where censorship, corruption, or violence are daily realities,"
That being said, Jigsaw seems to show more of a rebranding than a focus to make changes. Initial tools includes Project Shield which is used to prevent distributed denial of service (DDoS) to alleviate attacks on websites from oppressive regimes and secure free expression online, and Digital Attack Map allows to infiltrate cyber attackers using data visualization.
Jigsaw will not remain with Google which was carried out by Sundar Pichai, but will be under Alphabet umbrella instead.
