[sam_in_nyc]

It's my guess Google is in this for the cookies and analytics that can be gathered by (however many) websites that use ReCAPTCHA.

As a trivial side-note: When encountered with a ReCAPTCHA, I'll fill out one of the words and put in gibberish (or other text) for the other. For some reason I find it satisfying to "pull a fast one" on any captcha service.

[mseebach]

> For some reason I find it satisfying to "pull a fast one" on any captcha service.

Why? What do you achieve except being told you're wrong every once in a while? I mean, you're trying to bother a machine. Isn't that a bit like a reverse Turing test?

I suspect the amount of noise that ReCAPTCHA filters out from automatic attempts is several orders of magnitude larger than anything any group of actual humans can generate.

[sam_in_nyc]

It takes no extra effort to enter in the wrong item, so the cost of doing so is about zero.

As far as what satisfaction I gain from it... I suppose I find it to be a sort of rebellious act. Also, I did not get accepted into Carnegie Mellon.

[ryanpetrich]

Unless you happen to be 4chan