Google Buys reCAPTCHA For Text Conversion Technology

Google purchased reCAPTCHA--a company that provides security measures for forms that require users to type bitmap, distorted letter/numbers to prevent robots from completing the forms.

Google's interest in reCAPTCHA was that it uses scanned archives to provide the distorted looking text. The company then uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to change the scan to text. This technology will help Google in both its Google Books and Google News Archive Search programs.