Yesterday, with no warning, Google announced that its wonderful ‘ReCAPTCHCA’ product will now need a Google Cloud account to run, and, that depending on the tier you use it at, it’s a paid feature.
To be perfectly clear, you’re pretty successful if its a paid feature, that requires tens of thousands of attempted form submits.
And, to be fair, if Google is processing 10,000+ form submits on your behalf, I don’t blame them for wanting the… 8$ they are charging.
That all makes sense.
The part that has complexity is implementation. Because now every client, no matter how small, needs a Google Cloud account. And that takes time.
I mean… sure. It’s like an hour maybe, or two for someone who doesn’t know what they are doing… but someone has to do it. Google did not automate it.
And there are… 11,849,816 live implementations of ReCAPTHCA (source here), with another 3,444,409 as secondary implementations within that first lot… adding up to a grand total of 15,294,225 implementations. That is… a lot.
If we are very generous and assume an average of only a 1 hour implementation, inclusive of reading developer notes, troubleshooting logons, setting up cloud service, connecting websites, onboarding payment, verifying function… that comes out to… 1,746 years of work for mankind.
1,746 years.
Set against the average human lifespan (2022) of 72 years, that comes out to 24.25 human lifetimes.
Set against the average worldwide agency rate (2024) of $148.13 per hour, that comes out to $2,265,533,549.25. I think… let’s be generous and assume a ton of these websites have inhouse teams where the costs can be defrayed, or owner operators that are savvy… and let’s call it $1 Billion in raw cost to the market.
…to do what?
Move Google’s free ReCAPTHCA service to a paid platform so they can charge you, minimally, for the privilege of using it, as is their right.
The problem is that someone has to pay for it, and that someone is you.
It doesn’t matter what else happens… it will always be you.
No matter who pays for it in the moment, the effect will roll down the pricing chain to consumers – every time.
If the client rolls it into their pricing, it will show up in the pricing of products everywhere, etc etc etc.
As the global economy accepts a $1 billion dollar nudge… and everyone pitches in a few cents to pay for it.
And this happens… every day? The example present is the smallest of all possible changes. Platforms roll out tons of these updates, every year. It’s a constant. It’s part of the information and technology economy that we are all invested in, whether we want to be or not.
It is a reality to set against your stock gains across the last 15 years and note that maybe there is a small percentage difference in what you were taxed on by the government and the actual effect on your wallet.
My encouragement, to everyone, is not to blame others for this situation.
You should not blame your employees, your partners, your vendors, your clients, or your service providers.
Nobody has a choice and the consumer will pay for it, one way or another.
I wish I had a magic answer.
I don’t. I mean… no question, the trillion dollar tech company should pay for it, but they aren’t going to. We will.
Absent voting in elections, shareholder meetings, and with your wallet I think our best choice is to be graceful to the people around us, who also live here, and who also did not design the systems we live within.
And maybe ask yourself, if you added up all the tech changes, and all the rollouts, and all the platform costs, and all the new ideas, and all the bugs that creates… what’s the cost?
Is it worth it?