Google Inc. has acquired a Carnegie Mellon University spin-off company that uses word puzzles to protect computer users from spam and fraud.
Google said Wednesday that it has bought ReCaptcha Inc., a CMU spin-off that develops online puzzles to boost computer security. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Luis von Ahn, an assistant professor of computer science at CMU, founded ReCaptcha in 2008. The company uses puzzles with squiggly words and numbers that humans can read but computers cannot.
Words in the puzzles come from old books and newspapers whose ink and paper have degraded — hampering the ability of computers to recognize them. As a result, when humans solve the puzzles, they help digitize the old material by teaching computers how to read it.
According to Google, its latest acquisition protects more than 100,000 Web sites from malicious programs that do tasks, ranging from scalping tickets to acquiring millions of e-mail addresses for spamming.
"Google is the best fit for ReCaptcha," von Ahn said in a statement. "From the very beginning, people often assumed the project was connected to Google, so it only makes sense that ReCaptcha Inc. ultimately would find a home within Google."
The technology used by ReCaptcha also is used in huge text-scanning projects, such as Google Books and Google News Archive Search, that will aid visually impaired users.
Von Ahn will stay on CMU's faculty and will work for Google.
"I'm not sure of the size of the team, but they will be Google employees and will remain in Pittsburgh," said Andrew Pederson, a Google spokesman.
Google opened an office on Carnegie Mellon's campus in 2006. The company is working on a project led by von Ahn to develop Web games that help computers get smarter.
Three years ago, Google licensed the ESP Game, created by von Ahn. It is now used as the Google Image Labeler.
ReCaptcha is one of more than 200 companies that have been created in the Pittsburgh area because of Carnegie Mellon during the last 15 years, said university spokesman Byron Spice. Those companies have created 9,000 jobs.
Spice declined to say what Carnegie Mellon gets from Google for the purchase of ReCaptcha.
ReCaptcha is the latest CMU spin-off to be bought out by a technology giant. In 1994, Michael Mauldin of Carnegie Mellon's Center for Machine Translation developed the search engine Lycos.
Lycos went public, then was bought out by Terra Networks in 2000. The merged company, Terra Lycos, was bought in 2004 by Daum Communications Corp. of South Korea.
