Why is null an object and what's the difference between null and undefined?

Question

Why is null considered an object in JavaScript?

Is checking

if ( object == null )
      Do something

the

Answer 1

From "The Principles of Object-Oriented Javascript" by Nicholas C. Zakas

But why an object when the type is null? (In fact, this has been acknowledged as an error by TC39, the committee that designs and maintains JavaScript. You could reason that null is an empty object pointer, making "object" a logical return value, but that’s still confusing.)

Zakas, Nicholas C. (2014-02-07). The Principles of Object-Oriented JavaScript (Kindle Locations 226-227). No Starch Press. Kindle Edition.

That said:

var game = null; //typeof(game) is "object"

game.score = 100;//null is not an object, what the heck!?
game instanceof Object; //false, so it's not an instance but it's type is object
//let's make this primitive variable an object;
game = {}; 
typeof(game);//it is an object
game instanceof Object; //true, yay!!!
game.score = 100;

Undefined case:

var score; //at this point 'score' is undefined
typeof(score); //'undefined'
var score.player = "felix"; //'undefined' is not an object
score instanceof Object; //false, oh I already knew that.