<div align=justify>Captchas are the Internet's speed bump. They perform little function beyond slowing users down—not bots, mind you, just people. But now Google's found a way to employ the oddly-fonted phrases for a different kind of verification.

<div align=justify>Captchas are the Internet's speed bump. They perform little function beyond slowing users down—not bots, mind you, just people. But now Google's found a way to employ the oddly-fonted phrases for a different kind of verification.

ReCAPTCHAs are the second generation of Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart, designed at Carnegie Mellon University and purchased by Google in 2009. In addition to blocking bots, these challenge phrases also assisted Google's text digitization efforts. ReCAPTCHAs traditionally only display text-based challenges yet, as the image above shows, have also begun adding image-based challenges too. But why do the images all look like cropped Street View shots? Because they are.

ReCAPTCHAs are the second generation of Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart, designed at Carnegie Mellon University and purchased by Google in 2009. In addition to blocking bots, these challenge phrases also assisted Google's text digitization efforts. ReCAPTCHAs traditionally only display text-based challenges yet, as the image above shows, have also begun adding image-based challenges too. But why do the images all look like cropped Street View shots? Because they are.