[ChrisNorstrom]

Computers can simulate everything from visual character recognition to mouse movements and everything else we do online.

My prediction is that Google will one day enter the "Bot Recognition Market". They've got so much data on everyone and their browsing habits from Gmail, to Adsense, to Search results, to Google Analytics. Their cookies, browser, javascript, and ads follow you around all over the internet. They're the only company capable of putting all that data together and returning via API: "This user is a real person, we've analyzed 3 years of data from them, go ahead and let them sign up"

Or returning: "User is a bot, their IP has no purchases, no google account, no search requests, no adsense impressions, etc..."

[babby]

The part about Google offering a sort of vetting service sounds quite plausible, in a "Oh, shit" kind of way. For those of us that try to be anonymous we could have further encumbrance dealing with not being "Google Verified™".