Benjamin Carr, Ph.D. 👨🏻‍💻🧬<p><a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/reCAPTCHA" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>reCAPTCHA</span></a>: 819 million hours of wasted human time and billions of dollars in Google profits<br><a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/Google" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>Google</span></a> acquired reCAPTCHA in 2009 and used it to digitize <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/GoogleBooks" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GoogleBooks</span></a> and improve <a href="https://hachyderm.io/tags/GoogleStreetView" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">#<span>GoogleStreetView</span></a> by processing photos of street signs and house numbers.<br>By 2025, reCAPTCHA is easily defeated by bots. Yet Google continues to offer it because reCAPTCHA has evolved into a tracking tool that collects user data and generates billions in revenue for Google <br><a href="https://boingboing.net/2025/02/07/recaptcha-819-million-hours-of-wasted-human-time-and-billions-of-dollars-google-profit.html/amp" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">boingboing.net/2025/02/07/reca</span><span class="invisible">ptcha-819-million-hours-of-wasted-human-time-and-billions-of-dollars-google-profit.html/amp</span></a></p>