Definition: In September of 2009, Google announced that they'd acquired the CAPTCHA company, reCAPTCHA. They stated that their intent with the company was beyond CAPTCHA. They were also interested in reCAPTCHA's technology to enhance Google Books and other text scanning projects. Most of reCAPTCHA's spam prevention uses distorted versions of scanned newspaper text.
As of this writing, reCAPTCHA is still available as a free service for website owners. New users can sign up for a free account at recaptcha.net.
