Ever wondered how Google make profit when you use reCAPTCHA ?

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reCAPTCHA is a Google Product and was designed to establish whether a computer user is human or not.
Q. Isn’t reCAPTCHA just some random numbers or letters ?

 No. They are in-fact part of a larger Google project to digitise printed books. Books and even newspapers are scanned and are run through computer programs to identify individual words in the text. But now and then it happens that some part of the printed text is poorly scanned or is stained that it becomes difficult for Google systems to be 100% certain as to what the word really is. In such cases these words are flagged as suspicious and are sent into the reCAPTCHA system.
Over a period of time a lot of different users see the same letters and enter them into the reCAPTCHA boxes and after a while Google systems are able to deduce the correct spelling of the word using rather simple algorithms.
This program later was further extended to include the Street addresses under the Google Street Program in which Google’s systems could not properly understand the home or street address from the images.
For a complete understanding of how Google verify’s the user entered texts or how entering of first ever reCAPTCHA gets approval, please follow this link.

Q. If I am transcribing(read then write) text for Google, shouldn’t I be paid ?


Yes of course, this is very similar to hiring 2 people, one who reads words from a paper and the other who types it into the computer. In fact Google has been widely criticised for using reCAPTCHA as a source of unpaid labour as it has unfairly used people around the world to help it transcribe books, addresses, and newspapers without any compensation.
So all these years, without even knowing, you have assisted Google in transcribing unreadable texts to something useful. Google thus has saved millions of dollars from not employing people to manually check these words and it sure has made a lot more selling Google Books and associated services in Google Street View.
In our opinion, its a delight to even know how Google solved the digitisation problem using rather a simple but innovative procedure. While it doesn't bother us to have solved the reCAPTCHAs for free for Google, but sure it is an interesting way Google ended up saving and making a lot of money.

You have made money for Google in a very unusual way!



Reference Sources :
1. YouTube video Explanation: I'm not a robot
2. Creator of reCaptcha Project: Meet Luis von Ahn: The man you’ve worked for, without knowing it
3. Technical Explanation: reCAPTCHA - Wikipedia

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