Google buys reCAPTCHA

Well google is know for its smart acquisitions of smart starup companies and unleashing it to the world for free. Google recently acquired reCaptcha a system originally developed by Carnegie Mellon University and is quite popular as a authentication mechanism on a large number of sites.

Deep rooted is a smart idea as it takes help of users to help decrypt words unrecognizable by even modern day Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies. It challenges users to decrypt two words instead of the usual one and one of the word the system actually recognizes itself and the other word it expects people to recognize it and type it in. Based on enough set of matches entered by other users who were challenged, it equates that unrecognized word to a correct popular word. I guess the idea has always been there with Amazon's mechanical turk, google images etc to make use of random users to help decipher hidden data in images and content using intuitive and innovative techniques.

Read the complete new on at google's blog.