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Alphabet Now Has Its Own Think Tank, as Google Ideas Becomes Jigsaw

Cool name!

totallyPic.com / Shutterstock

Google now has a more cryptic, but certainly more badass, name for its internal think tank and policy organization.

Google Ideas, one of the pet projects of former Google CEO and current Alphabet Chairman Eric Schmidt, will now be called Jigsaw, becoming the tenth unit inside of Google’s holding company, Alphabet. Jared Cohen, the guy who ran Google Ideas, will serve as president of Jigsaw.

Jigsaw is where Google thinks up ways to solve the world’s biggest problems, like privacy or Web security or even money laundering. Among the other challenges Jigsaw is trying to solve: Organized crime, police brutality, human trafficking and terrorism.

Jigsaw’s efforts aim to influence policy in ways that benefit major tech players, including Alphabet. Schmidt announced the news Tuesday in a post on Medium.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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