A federal judge has dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit against Google that alleges fraud because the media giant sometimes requires people wanting a free Gmail account to spend seconds filling out a two-word CAPTCHA—the second word of which is not for security purposes and instead provides an economic gain to Google unbeknownst to the user.

As we all know, CAPTCHA stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart." They're everywhere online, and are designed to do what they say. They usually ask online surfers to type in a word that appears on the screen to enable deeper access into a website and hopefully keep out bots.

In the federal lawsuit dismissed last week, the proposed class action said Google is committing fraud by forcing people opening a Gmail account to decipher two words. That's because the second word is Google crowdsourcing the transcribing of words as part of the media giant's digitalization of books or for its Google Maps service. Google employs optical character recognition to perform those digitalization services, but sometimes the OCR doesn't capture all the words or numbers in an image, according to the lawsuit. Humans do it in the CAPTCHA on Google's behalf as the second word in the Google CAPTCHA. That second word serves no security purpose, and those signing up for Gmail aren't told they are actually doing a few seconds of transcribing for Google, free of charge, according to a federal judge's opinion tossing the suit.

"Plaintiff has not alleged any facts that plausibly suggest the few seconds it takes to type a second word is something for which a reasonable consumer would expect to receive compensation," US District Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote Wednesday in dismissing the suit.

The judge added:

Google’s behavior is also not immoral and oppressive because the harm—if any—of typing a single word without knowledge of how Google profits from such conduct does not outweigh the benefit. Google’s profit is not the only benefit the Court considers in this balancing test—completing the prompt also entitles users to a free Gmail account. Moreover, users’ transcriptions increase the utility of other free Google services such as Google Maps or Google Books. Plaintiff has failed to allege how these numerous benefits outweigh the few seconds it takes to transcribe one word.

Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the decision "ranks as one of the most interesting Internet law rulings so far in 2016."

"As pitched by the plaintiffs, Google stole a small amount of time and attention from a large number of people for Google’s own commercial gain. Yet, the court says 'so what?' When the amount of attention consumed is so trivial (the time it takes to decode a single word), this judge won’t go out of her way to find legal recourse. (Hence, the refusal to allow the plaintiffs an amended complaint.)" Goldman said.

Neither Noah M. Schubert, a San Francisco lawyer suing Google, nor Boston attorney Patrick Vallely returned messages seeking comment.

And here's the kicker from Judge Corley:

"As Google suggests, it strains credulity that Plaintiff or class members would forego access to a free Gmail account and higher quality Google Books or Google Maps because their brief transcription of a single word might, indirectly or directly, facilitate Google’s profit earning."

Listing image by Becky Stern