Google Wants To Solve The World’s Problems With Technology

Google aims to combat some of the most pressing issues affecting our world today using technology.

The search giant has announced the creation of Jigsaw, which will look to buy up and invest in breakthrough technology to tackle global challenges such as terrorism and online crime.

Previously known as Google Ideas, which looked to explore how technology might help people coming online for the first time, particularly in developing markets, Jigsaw will now exist as another division of the Alphabet family.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt revealed that Jigsaw “will be investing in and building technology to expand access to information for the world’s most vulnerable populations and to defend against the world’s most challenging security threats.”

Piece it together

“The team’s mission is to use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks,” Schmidt wrote in a post on Medium announcing the news.

Jigsaw will be headed up by Google Ideas head Jared Cohen, suggesting that not much will change internally in the organisation, but that its aims are now much bigger and wider than before.

Google Ideas has previously been behind projects such as the Digital Attack Map, which displays the top digital attacks in the world in real time, and Project Shield, which used Google’s computing infrastructure to protect from DDoS attacks.

“Why Jigsaw? For one thing, the new name acknowledges that the world is a complex puzzle of physical and digital challenges,” Schmidt added. “For another, it reflects our belief that collaborative problem-solving yields the best solutions.”

“The world is as complex as ever, but we believe that a unique combination of principled research and technology expertise can help put the puzzle together—one piece at a time.”

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