Over the past few years that you’ve completing reCaptchas to sign up to websites, complete orders and a few other things, how many times have you had to squint just to try and work out what the second word was?
For years your average internet user has had to adjust their vision just to sign up to the simplest of websites and Google had no answer for it. From signing into your Gmail account to signing up to forums, reCaptcha has caused mayhem all over the internet since its invention.
The original Captchas were designed to only give you an easy answer once Google confirms that you’re a human via a cookie from their AdSense advertising program, which begs the question: why does Google need you to confirm you’re a human if you’ve already passively proved to them you’re a human?
After considering this, reCaptcha was born. A new design, new algorithm and a whole new crazy selection of illegible phrases that you’re forced to read to get your new accounts signed up for.
After Google saw the sheer amount of complaints about their current system, they’ve stepped up their game and redesigned (again!) their reCaptchas to make them more readable for humans (huzzah!).
This has no only come as a job to consumers everywhere as they no longer feel the need for reading glasses just to sign into their email accounts, but Google’s complaints have already seen a slight decrease in numbers – meaning that the new system is starting to show that it’s working!
How do you feel about these changes? Let us know in the comment section below!
Thanks to Arstechina for the info and image!
You don’t need to know the second word though, the reCaptcha will work with either the 7 digit number if that is in it or if it’s words the longer more legible word that isn’t a real word.
True story: I had a job where a significant part of my job was to type in captchas. lol. All you have to do on “difficult” captchas is tilt your head (since they are elogated into different angles). I’m surprised that the complaints people made gave them enough reason to “fix” it. I bet they are “fixing it” because the old captcha system was too easily readable by bots and not readable by humans. The headline does put a nice spin to it though.
Yeah, Captcha was (is) a real pain in the posterior. I had to refresh the two words numerous times before I could remotely understand what they were and I usually got that wrong as well. A real hit or miss affair.