Google brings reCAPTCHA API to Android

Ten years after beginning to offer protection to Web users, Google has now taken a step towards protecting mobile devices and brought its renowned reCAPTCHA API to Android. The move is to protect Android users from spam and abuse, as well as countermoves by its competitors in the smartphone space, which include Apple and Microsoft.

“With this API, reCAPTCHA can better tell human and bots apart to provide a streamlined user experience on the mobile,” said Wei Liu, product manager for reCAPTCHA, Google, in a blog post.

Available as a part of Google Play Services, the reCAPTCHA Android API comes along with Google SafetyNet that provides services such as device attestation and safe browsing to protect mobile apps. The combination enables developers to perform both the device and user attestations using the same API.

Carnegie Mellon alumni Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum built reCAPTCH as a CAPTCHA-like system back in 2007. The development was acquired by Google two years after its inception, in September 2009. The solution has benefited more than a billion users so far.

Google is not just limiting the access of reCAPTCHA to Android but also plans to bring it to Apple’s iOS as well. It would be interesting to see how it is adopted by iOS developers. Meanwhile, you can use the reCAPTCHA Android Library under SafetyNet APIS to integrate the secured solution into your Android apps.