Google paid out $10 million in bug bounties last year

The bounties, which were paid for finding and reporting potential security flaws in the tech giant's software, went to 632 researchers in 68 countries.

In 2023, Google paid out $10 million in bug bounties through its Vulnerability Bounty Program. The purpose of this system is to reward researchers for discovering and reporting bugs and vulnerabilities. This way it can be patched before someone else can exploit it.

This $10 million is $2 million less than it was in 2022, but it still shows that there is a large community of researchers working with Google. The money went to 632 researchers from 68 countries, with the highest amount being $113,337. Bugs that may have greater consequences or are easier to exploit generally receive a larger reward.

Of these bounties, $3.4 million was paid for reports on the Android mobile operating system, while $2.1 million was paid for bug reports on the Chrome browser. Google first introduced a bug bounty system for its services in 2010, and has since paid out a total of about $59 million in bounties.