September 16, 2009

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reCAPTCHA Acquisition by Google

Today Google acquired Luis von Ahn’s latest brainchild: reCAPTCHA.  Every news story I’ve read is missing the key piece of background insight, which makes this news story obvious in hindsight.  Luis von Ahn did the acquisition mating dance with Google once before.

ESP Game was a research project that Luis von Ahn developed to use “human computing” in place of computer algorithms in order to label a massive number of images with remarkable accuracy and depth. The ESP Game helped Luis von Ahn win a MacArther “Genius” Award, and Google acquired a license to the ESP Game in a similar transaction to this ReCAPTCHA transaction back in 2006.

So, Google’s purchase of Luis von Ahn’s next project is a natural fit, not only to Google’s book scanning efforts, but also because it’s the second time they’ve done a deal with Luis von Ahn.

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  1. thegongshow posted this

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