13 ms·

Google using captchas to get humans to read street addresses captured by street view cars to improve maps results remains one of the most Googly things they've

by macrael 10y ago

Google using captchas to get humans to read street addresses captured by street view cars to improve maps results remains one of the most Googly things they've ever done. Genius, lateral, and a little weird.

quentindemetz 10y ago
Google didn't invent this: Luis von Ahn, a CMU grad student did in 2000. Google acquired it in 2009. https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/partners/success-stories/recaptcha.html https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/partners/success-stories/recaptcha...
- jpatokal 10y ago
  The original pre-Google reCAPTCHA was used for digitizing books. Using it to read house numbers for Street View was a Google addition.
  - bbarn 10y ago
    The original inventor also went on to found Duolingo, which uses teaching someone a language as a way to translate web pages as a service. I like that model a lot more, as at least you get something in exchange (the language learning)
    - joshuamorton 10y ago
      (am google) To be fair, if you use google maps, and don't have any ethical issues with helping googler, you do get a return on investment, in that you get improved ML capabilities and improved address recognition in google maps.
- dsp1234 10y ago
  The above poster doesn't say that Google invented recaptcha, only that their use of it to have humans clean street view data is very Googly. The original recaptcha was only text from book digitization projects.
akerro 10y ago
Not sure if that's good for us. We're doing work for google for free. Google Translate will replace translators, Google car will replace drivers, Google VR + map will replace city guides. We're giving them knowledge and powers to replace us, for free. Professions will disappear, people will lose jobs, Google will get richer and richer, will not pay me or you for fixing their suggestions in Google Translate or fixing maps or improving computed route from A to B. No one is being paid for that work, but someone is monetizing it.
- schrodinger 10y ago
  You could argue that your payment is access to all of the free services they offer (e.g. Gmail)
  - juice_bus 10y ago
    Which is also mined for data for targeted advertisement, wouldn't that be the payment for access?
    - anoonmoose 10y ago
      Yes, but now we're really just arguing about the actual costs of those services.
  - akerro 10y ago
    Will that feed me or make rich richer and poor poorer?
    - deadbunny 10y ago
      Is it meant to?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- washadjeffmad 10y ago
  I consider it more a donation towards posterity than getting stiffed on some short term compensation. It's just an opinion, but if the things Google has created and shared into the whole of human knowledge towards the betterment of future societies are still being used in a century for my grandkids (and the rest of humankind) to benefit from, then I think it's better than not having it because a few million people who couldn't have done it themselves said 'no' over a pittance. I can't speak for you, but my dying thoughts won't be a sour reflection on all of opportunities to monetize my existence I might have missed.
new299 10y ago
Right, but it was really just an extension of the reCAPTCHA technology. Originally applied only to books. reCAPTCHA was a technology acquired by Google. Not developed in house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA
- meowface 10y ago
  The founder, Luis von Ahn, later went on to found Duolingo. Duolingo uses a similar "twofer" crowdsourcing strategy.
ge96 10y ago
I wonder about the error-check thing. If at least one paid employee had to enter a first-set of data that was 'absolutely correct' before being seen by multiple people online which then 'solidifies' the correct responses. I briefly read about this somewhere but still not sure. I mean it does obviously work in the sense of entering something blatantly not correct is flagged.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  Probably no need to have someone seed it. You just show the same image to a thousand people, and if 900 of them answer it one way that's almost certainly the correct answer.
  - ge96 10y ago
    Interesting. I'm inclined to think that this is not good. But it makes sense consensus, just seems to me if everyone is wrong. But the quality-check (seed guy) could be wrong as well.
ybrah 10y ago
I make sure to always spell it wrong on the characters I can tell the botnet couldn't figure out Its a small rebellious act of mine (that is for moot because I'm sure they give the same captcha to other users for verification)
throwaway2016a 10y ago
Goog-411 predates that quite a bit an dis arguably more Googley. Launching a free 411 service (at a time when you usually paid per minute for that) and using it to improve your voice recognition algorithms. It was essentially "OK Google" for dumb phones. For anyone not familiar, 411 (in the US at least) was the directory service number. You could call it to get things like what time a restaurant was open until. Directions to the airport. Etc.
- macrael 10y ago
  They also gave out free voicemail for the same reason, no?
tzm 10y ago
How can you translate the entire internet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mrighele 10y ago
Having to do free work for Google is more than weird for me. For this reason unless the page is really important I end up closing the tab. If it was for open service (such as OpenStreetMap) it would be a different matter though.
- danso 10y ago
  How is that "free work"? Automated usage can threaten a site's bottom-line, and even its existence. A site resorts to Google's CAPTCHA's service because they don't have the money to build their own detector. It's not a service that was free for Google to create. edit: Also worth noting that some of this "free work" that users do for Google is used to improve bot-detection overall. The comment to this blog post (the post itself, and its paper are great reads) is a nice example: https://security.googleblog.com/2013/10/recaptcha-just-got-easier-but-only-if.html?showComment=1407032409681#c2120495904244057201 https://security.googleblog.com/2013/10/recaptcha-just-got-e... Essentially, the user is complaining (and justifiably so) of being served the pre-Street-View versions of CAPTCHA; I had forgotten how bad they could get: http://i.imgur.com/01F2eES.png http://i.imgur.com/01F2eES.png
  - annnnd 10y ago
    GP is talking about visitors doing free work for Google. Googel can use the results to train its algorithms - this is a big set of data and very valuable. Of course the site (and with it visitors) benefit in this exchange, so I agree with you that it is not entirely "free".
  - dsp1234 10y ago
    How is that "free work"? The original recaptcha was used to help clear up text from book digitization projects where OCR couldn't understand the data. The appeal of this was that these works were in the public domain, and thus proper digitization of these works is a societal-wide benefit. Since Google purchased it, they've been using it to: 1.) Clean street view data for a proprietary product (Google maps) 2.) Build training sets for unknown ML purposes These are activities that Google could very much pay a group of people to do. Instead, through recaptcha, they are getting that work from the end user for no payment. A case could be made that it's not free for the owner of the site that deploy recaptcha (because they get value out of the service, and Google gets data/ML services). However, the actual end user who has to fill out the recaptcha does not benefit in any significant way. Since a recaptcha is an inconvenience to the end user, that user pays both with the time to fill it out, and the data gathered by Google. TL;DR Some people do not like that Google benefits from a transaction where Google is not a party, and where otherwise, Google could generate the benefit using their own resources.
2_listerine_pls 10y ago
The idea existed since before. Google just adapted it to images other than text after they bought it.
dzhiurgis 10y ago
I wonder how long until they place some native ads in there so that publishers could earn a penny.
- q3k 10y ago
  Solvemedia does something [1] like this. The experience is horrible. Doesn't help that I only see it on fairly shady websites, same kind that use adf.ly, pop-unders and other obnoxious monetization schemes. [1] - http://solvemedia.com/publishers/ http://solvemedia.com/publishers/
- Waterluvian 10y ago
  "Look at the picture to the right. How much is the new Cheddar Cheese Apocalypse Whopper for a limited time only?"
mirimir 10y ago
I see lot's of those on Tor browser. There's nothing about entering street numbers, just identifying images that include street numbers. But perhaps that's also valuable. And what about the other major types, such as rivers, mountains, store fronts and street signs?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- obmelvin 10y ago
  I believe those are to provide data for image Segmentation (localization of an image is harder than pure recognition)
- the8472 10y ago
  It depends on whether you're presented with the v1/noscript version or the v2 captcha. Desktop users may prefer the noscript version since it's faster to fill out with a keyboard if you're already typing into a form anyway instead of having to switch to the mouse.
  - gexcolo 10y ago
    Both v1 and v2 have noscript versions. Here is what the v2 noscript version looks like: https://vc.gg/B9zmj4hi https://vc.gg/B9zmj4hi https://vc.gg/CTskizZe https://vc.gg/CTskizZe
    - the8472 10y ago
      That is terrible. I really prefer the v1 variant since I generally don't get the single-click for v2. Apparently they have discontinued it.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      I'm talking about image-based v2. I have better luck with them if I allow Javascript. I don't recall seeing the code pasting ones until recently. I often found v1 impossible. And buggy, in the sense that they kept repeating even when I clearly got them right.
danielrhodes 10y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in-the-loop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in-the-loop Expect to see more of this.
- gingerbread-man 10y ago
  Clicking on the link I thought Wikipedia just unveiled a radical re-design haha. (It's a link to the mobile website.)

by macrael 10y ago

quentindemetz 10y ago

Google didn't invent this: Luis von Ahn, a CMU grad student did in 2000. Google acquired it in 2009. https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/partners/success-stories/recaptcha.html https://www.cylab.cmu.edu/partners/success-stories/recaptcha...

jpatokal 10y ago
The original pre-Google reCAPTCHA was used for digitizing books. Using it to read house numbers for Street View was a Google addition.
- bbarn 10y ago
  The original inventor also went on to found Duolingo, which uses teaching someone a language as a way to translate web pages as a service. I like that model a lot more, as at least you get something in exchange (the language learning)
  - joshuamorton 10y ago
    (am google) To be fair, if you use google maps, and don't have any ethical issues with helping googler, you do get a return on investment, in that you get improved ML capabilities and improved address recognition in google maps.
dsp1234 10y ago
The above poster doesn't say that Google invented recaptcha, only that their use of it to have humans clean street view data is very Googly. The original recaptcha was only text from book digitization projects.

akerro 10y ago

Not sure if that's good for us. We're doing work for google for free. Google Translate will replace translators, Google car will replace drivers, Google VR + map will replace city guides. We're giving them knowledge and powers to replace us, for free. Professions will disappear, people will lose jobs, Google will get richer and richer, will not pay me or you for fixing their suggestions in Google Translate or fixing maps or improving computed route from A to B. No one is being paid for that work, but someone is monetizing it.

schrodinger 10y ago
You could argue that your payment is access to all of the free services they offer (e.g. Gmail)
- juice_bus 10y ago
  Which is also mined for data for targeted advertisement, wouldn't that be the payment for access?
  - anoonmoose 10y ago
    Yes, but now we're really just arguing about the actual costs of those services.
- akerro 10y ago
  Will that feed me or make rich richer and poor poorer?
  - deadbunny 10y ago
    Is it meant to?
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
washadjeffmad 10y ago
I consider it more a donation towards posterity than getting stiffed on some short term compensation. It's just an opinion, but if the things Google has created and shared into the whole of human knowledge towards the betterment of future societies are still being used in a century for my grandkids (and the rest of humankind) to benefit from, then I think it's better than not having it because a few million people who couldn't have done it themselves said 'no' over a pittance. I can't speak for you, but my dying thoughts won't be a sour reflection on all of opportunities to monetize my existence I might have missed.

new299 10y ago

Right, but it was really just an extension of the reCAPTCHA technology. Originally applied only to books. reCAPTCHA was a technology acquired by Google. Not developed in house. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReCAPTCHA

meowface 10y ago
The founder, Luis von Ahn, later went on to found Duolingo. Duolingo uses a similar "twofer" crowdsourcing strategy.

ge96 10y ago

I wonder about the error-check thing. If at least one paid employee had to enter a first-set of data that was 'absolutely correct' before being seen by multiple people online which then 'solidifies' the correct responses. I briefly read about this somewhere but still not sure. I mean it does obviously work in the sense of entering something blatantly not correct is flagged.

ceejayoz 10y ago
Probably no need to have someone seed it. You just show the same image to a thousand people, and if 900 of them answer it one way that's almost certainly the correct answer.
- ge96 10y ago
  Interesting. I'm inclined to think that this is not good. But it makes sense consensus, just seems to me if everyone is wrong. But the quality-check (seed guy) could be wrong as well.

ybrah 10y ago

I make sure to always spell it wrong on the characters I can tell the botnet couldn't figure out Its a small rebellious act of mine (that is for moot because I'm sure they give the same captcha to other users for verification)

throwaway2016a 10y ago

Goog-411 predates that quite a bit an dis arguably more Googley. Launching a free 411 service (at a time when you usually paid per minute for that) and using it to improve your voice recognition algorithms. It was essentially "OK Google" for dumb phones. For anyone not familiar, 411 (in the US at least) was the directory service number. You could call it to get things like what time a restaurant was open until. Directions to the airport. Etc.

macrael 10y ago
They also gave out free voicemail for the same reason, no?

tzm 10y ago

How can you translate the entire internet? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQl6jUjFjp4

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

mrighele 10y ago

Having to do free work for Google is more than weird for me. For this reason unless the page is really important I end up closing the tab. If it was for open service (such as OpenStreetMap) it would be a different matter though.

danso 10y ago
How is that "free work"? Automated usage can threaten a site's bottom-line, and even its existence. A site resorts to Google's CAPTCHA's service because they don't have the money to build their own detector. It's not a service that was free for Google to create. edit: Also worth noting that some of this "free work" that users do for Google is used to improve bot-detection overall. The comment to this blog post (the post itself, and its paper are great reads) is a nice example: https://security.googleblog.com/2013/10/recaptcha-just-got-easier-but-only-if.html?showComment=1407032409681#c2120495904244057201 https://security.googleblog.com/2013/10/recaptcha-just-got-e... Essentially, the user is complaining (and justifiably so) of being served the pre-Street-View versions of CAPTCHA; I had forgotten how bad they could get: http://i.imgur.com/01F2eES.png http://i.imgur.com/01F2eES.png
- annnnd 10y ago
  GP is talking about visitors doing free work for Google. Googel can use the results to train its algorithms - this is a big set of data and very valuable. Of course the site (and with it visitors) benefit in this exchange, so I agree with you that it is not entirely "free".
- dsp1234 10y ago
  How is that "free work"? The original recaptcha was used to help clear up text from book digitization projects where OCR couldn't understand the data. The appeal of this was that these works were in the public domain, and thus proper digitization of these works is a societal-wide benefit. Since Google purchased it, they've been using it to: 1.) Clean street view data for a proprietary product (Google maps) 2.) Build training sets for unknown ML purposes These are activities that Google could very much pay a group of people to do. Instead, through recaptcha, they are getting that work from the end user for no payment. A case could be made that it's not free for the owner of the site that deploy recaptcha (because they get value out of the service, and Google gets data/ML services). However, the actual end user who has to fill out the recaptcha does not benefit in any significant way. Since a recaptcha is an inconvenience to the end user, that user pays both with the time to fill it out, and the data gathered by Google. TL;DR Some people do not like that Google benefits from a transaction where Google is not a party, and where otherwise, Google could generate the benefit using their own resources.

2_listerine_pls 10y ago

The idea existed since before. Google just adapted it to images other than text after they bought it.

dzhiurgis 10y ago

I wonder how long until they place some native ads in there so that publishers could earn a penny.

q3k 10y ago
Solvemedia does something [1] like this. The experience is horrible. Doesn't help that I only see it on fairly shady websites, same kind that use adf.ly, pop-unders and other obnoxious monetization schemes. [1] - http://solvemedia.com/publishers/ http://solvemedia.com/publishers/
Waterluvian 10y ago
"Look at the picture to the right. How much is the new Cheddar Cheese Apocalypse Whopper for a limited time only?"

mirimir 10y ago

I see lot's of those on Tor browser. There's nothing about entering street numbers, just identifying images that include street numbers. But perhaps that's also valuable. And what about the other major types, such as rivers, mountains, store fronts and street signs?

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
obmelvin 10y ago
I believe those are to provide data for image Segmentation (localization of an image is harder than pure recognition)
the8472 10y ago
It depends on whether you're presented with the v1/noscript version or the v2 captcha. Desktop users may prefer the noscript version since it's faster to fill out with a keyboard if you're already typing into a form anyway instead of having to switch to the mouse.
- gexcolo 10y ago
  Both v1 and v2 have noscript versions. Here is what the v2 noscript version looks like: https://vc.gg/B9zmj4hi https://vc.gg/B9zmj4hi https://vc.gg/CTskizZe https://vc.gg/CTskizZe
  - the8472 10y ago
    That is terrible. I really prefer the v1 variant since I generally don't get the single-click for v2. Apparently they have discontinued it.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    I'm talking about image-based v2. I have better luck with them if I allow Javascript. I don't recall seeing the code pasting ones until recently. I often found v1 impossible. And buggy, in the sense that they kept repeating even when I clearly got them right.

danielrhodes 10y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in-the-loop https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human-in-the-loop Expect to see more of this.

gingerbread-man 10y ago
Clicking on the link I thought Wikipedia just unveiled a radical re-design haha. (It's a link to the mobile website.)