Google Ideas, a think tank and lab that was perhaps best known for products such as ProjectShield and uProxy, has been spun off as Jigsaw and will now operate as a standalone entity under Google’s parent company Alphabet, Inc.

Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt made the announcement by a post on Medium (Blogger doesn’t cut it anymore apparently) where he explained that the Jigsaw team had as its mission “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 noted that the new name “acknowledges that the world is a complex puzzle of physical and digital challenges,” and that “For another, it reflects our belief that collaborative problem-solving yields the best solutions.”

The new entity would appear to be shifting to be more of a lab than a think tank alone, with Schmidt adding that it “would be investing in and building technology to expand to access to information for the world’s most vulnerable populations and to defend against the world’s most challenging security threats.”

Jared Cohen, the previous head of Google Ideas, has been promoted to President of Jigsaw.

Goals

According to the new Jigsaw website, the group vision statement reads as follows:

Jigsaw is a technology incubator that aims to tackle the toughest geopolitical issues. Our teams of engineers, research scientists, product managers, and issue experts are devoted to countering violent extremism, thwarting online censorship, and defending against the threats associated with digital attacks.

The website lists partners as the Gen Next Foundation, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Peace Research Institute Oslo, the Igarapé Institute, BBG, the Comparative Constitution Project, the Indigo Trust, the IC2 Institute, the University of Texas, International Idea, the Polaris Project, and La Strada International.

Jigsaw certainly seems to have noble goals, although what place it has as a stand-alone company under Alphabet, which includes companies such as X (formerly Google X), Calico, Fiber, Google Ventures and others isn’t clear; while some are clearly moonshots, none of them seem to be more long-term charitable plays, although it’s certainly not unknown for a company to operate a not-for-profit division.

More details about what they are aiming to achieve can be found on the Jigsaw website.

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