Google acquired reCAPTCHA, a user-dialogue system originally developed by Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum at Carnegie Mellon University's main Pittsburgh campus
Like CAPTCHA , reCAPTCHA asks users to enter words seen in distorted text images onscreen. The system is used to tell humans apart from computers.
With the technology, Google improves its fraud and spam protection throughout its services. It will also assist with Google's complex and controversial book-and-newspaper-scanning efforts.
Many of the words included in CAPTCHA challenges come from scanned newspaper and old books. "Computers find it hard to recognize these words because the ink and paper have degraded over time, but by typing them in as a CAPTCHA, crowds teach computers to read the scanned text," wrote Luis von Ahn, co-founder of reCAPTCHA and Will Cathcart, Google's Product Manager, in a blog post.