In 2010, Eric Schmidt approached Jared Cohen to lead Google Ideas as a "think-and-do tank" to research issues at the intersection of technology and geopolitics, and has worked on projects intended to protect activists and independent media from cyber-attacks.

[5] The team also hosted a number of conferences, including the 2017 Conflict in a Connected World Roundtable Series, in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations' Center of Preventative Action.

According to Schmidt, the new name "reflects our belief that collaborative problem-solving yields the best solutions" and 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".

In February 2017, Jigsaw and Google launched the free Perspective API, "a new tool for web publishers to identify toxic comments that can undermine a civil exchange of ideas".

[16] Project Shield is a free anti-distributed denial-of-service (anti-DDoS) service that is offered by Jigsaw to websites that have "media, elections, and human rights-related content.

"[17] The main goal of the project is to serve "small, under-resourced news sites that are vulnerable to the web’s growing epidemic of DDoS attacks", according to team lead George Conard.

[25][26] The Redirect Method is an open source methodology developed by Jigsaw in partnership, with Moonshot CVE,[27] that leverages Google's AdWords platform and YouTube to target potential ISIS recruits and dissuade them from joining the group.

[37][non-primary source needed] Other Jigsaw projects include Detox, Sideways Dictionary, Password Alert, Unfiltered.news, Digital Attack Map, and Montage (graduated to Storyful).

In 2016, Jigsaw worked with the Wikimedia Foundation on Detox, a project using Machine learning to help better understand online harassment on Wikipedia, with application to other web platforms.

In March 2017, Jigsaw partnered with The Washington Post to launch Sideways Dictionary, a community-driven collection of analogies to explain complex tech jargon.

[40] Password Alert helps protect against phishing attacks;[41] according to WIRED, "the company developed it for Syrian activists targeted by government-friendly hackers, but when it proved effective, it was rolled out to all of Google’s users.

[4] Montage is a program that "lets war correspondents and nonprofits crowdsource the analysis of YouTube videos to track conflicts and gather evidence of human rights violations.