I see 70 comments but I don't see anyone saying the obvious yet. Google provided captcha as a service. Previously, the service was paid for by the user provid

I see 70 comments but I don't see anyone saying the obvious yet. Google provided captcha as a service. Previously, the service was paid for by the user providing training for AI. This is equivalent to Google charging the website a few cents per X captcha, and the site providing a Google Opinions or similar where the user gets a simple task/question that is solved for a few cents credit. The user solves the task/question and pays a few cents to the site so the site can pay for the captcha service. The arrangement was strictly a win-win because the user would have to solve the captcha anyway. recaptcha hasn't provided value in terms of training data for a long time now, years/decades before the most recent LLM boom AFAIU, so Google was providing the captcha service at a loss. Now they're asking to actually be paid. Likely, Google is buckling down on its financials, like many other tech companies (and the layoffs are a similar symptom)