Why look for bugs in your system when you can just pay other people to do it? That’s the idea behind the bug bounty program that Google launched back in 2010 which has resulted in the company paying more than $4 mullion to over 200 researchers for locating around 500 bugs in the company’s systems. 

Google today announced it has paid out over $4 million since launching its bug bounty program in 2010. In the past year alone, the company paid more than 200 different researchers over $1.5 million for finding more than 500 bugs. To celebrate, Google is expanding the scope of its Vulnerability Reward Program. The company will now accept submissions, and thus pay bounties when it deems valid, for its Android and iOS mobile applications. The company points to the respective pages on Google Play and Apple’s App Store where the app publisher is “Google Inc.” This would suggest that apps the company has acquired from other companies (Nest, for example) are the only ones not included.