Opine on Google’s “I am not a Robot” Captcha Images:

I am increasingly aware of Google’s apparent obsession with the following in particular:

• Fire Hydrants

• Crosswalks

• Traffic Lights

• Bicycles

• Boats

• Buses

As an infrastructure specialist, this is starting to raise the hairs on the back of my neck as it is suggesting they were not happy with Google Street View, Google Maps (which gives damn good and very up to date satellite imagery) or even Google World.

I was thinking why on earth they would need this given they have 24/7 satellites seeing everything probably on a live basis.

A few options seem to fit:

1. Their satellites are no longer able to see in DETAIL what they want to (a good thing).

2. They do not have access to close up, up to date street view imagery and so are scraping images from people’s Google accounts and getting the average Joe to do their job for them (very bad thing - privacy law was already out of the window, but this is another level of invasion of privacy if they are using the images to update their own 3D maps) - the Q phrase “Sometimes a MAP is useful.” springs to mind…

3. They do not have ground penetrating radar and so are using fire hydrant and traffic light locations to build an up to date map of below ground infrastructure networks. (Particularly worrying as these would be water and electricity cable pipe networks.)

4. My idea in the above point is somewhat supported by the fact that they want to know where buses are and crosswalks are - this would add public infrastructure network maps to their pile of information. And boats and bicycles…well they are all private, so one can only imagine that they want to figure out where all the private cycle paths and waterway networks are…

I will let your imaginations run wild with what a full 3D map of US public and private infrastructure networks would enable them to do…

*Apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, on the clock!