Ten years after protecting web users, Google has now taken a step towards mobile devices and brought its renowned reCAPTCHA API to Android. The new move is touted to protect Android users from spam and abuse — a distinguished development to counter Apple and Microsoft.

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

Available as a part of Google Play Services, the reCAPTCHA Android API is available 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.

Journey began in 2007

Carnegie Mellon alumni Luis von Ahn, Ben Maurer, Colin McMillen, David Abraham and Manuel Blum build reCAPTCH as a CAPTCHA-like system back in 2007. The development was acquired by Google two years after its inception, in September 2009.

While the original reCAPTCHA model was evolved from merely distorted text to street numbers and names and transformed into NoCAPTCHA in 2014, it received invisible reCAPTCHA as the most advanced version in March this year. The solution has benefited more than a billion users throughout its journey across the Web.

Apple’s iOS is the next stop

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