Are you using a VPN to access the internet?
If you are, then you are sharing an IP address with whomever else is using the same VPN. Suspicious behavior by other users of the VPN could be responsible for the CAPTCHA challenge you are seeing.
From time to time, I use VPNBook, a free VPN provider. I had been using one of their Canadian servers (appears to Google to be in India, LOL) without problems. Then, out of the blue, I started getting CAPTCHA challenges when doing Google searches while routed through the VPN. So, I switched to VPNBook's German server, and the problem went away. (I could have simply closed the VPN, but that would have been admitting defeat.)
Google has built a multibillion-dollar business out of knowing everything about its users. Now, a video produced within Google and obtained by The Verge offers a stunningly ambitious and unsettling look at how some at the company envision using that information in the future. The video was made in late 2016 by Nick Foster, the head of design at X (formerly Google X) and a co-founder of the Near Future Laboratory.
The video, shared internally within Google, imagines a future of total data collection, where Google helps nudge users into alignment with their goals, custom-prints personalized devices to collect more data, and even guides the behavior of entire populations to solve global problems like poverty and disease.
When reached for comment on the video, an X spokesperson provided the following statement to The Verge: “We understand if this is disturbing -- it is designed to be. This is a thought-experiment by the Design team from years ago that uses a technique known as ‘speculative design’ to explore uncomfortable ideas and concepts in order to provoke discussion and debate. It’s not related to any current or future products.”
All the data collected by your devices, the so-called ledger, is presented as a bundle of information that can be passed on to other users for the betterment of society. Titled The Selfish Ledger, the 9-minute film starts off with a history of Lamarckian epigenetics, which are broadly concerned with the passing on of traits acquired during an organism’s lifetime. Narrating the video, Foster acknowledges that the theory may have been discredited when it comes to genetics but says it provides a useful metaphor for user data. (The title is an homage to Richard Dawkins’ 1976 book The Selfish Gene.) The way we use our phones creates “a constantly evolving representation of who we are,” which Foster terms a “ledger,” positing that these data profiles could be built up, used to modify behaviors, and transferred from one user to another:
“User-centered design principles have dominated the world of computing for many decades, but what if we looked at things a little differently? What if the ledger could be given a volition or purpose rather than simply acting as a historical reference? What if we focused on creating a richer ledger by introducing more sources of information? What if we thought of ourselves not as the owners of this information, but as custodians, transient carriers, or caretakers?”--snip---rest at source
SOURCE: https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/17/17344250/google-x-selfish-ledger-video-data-privacy
Senior Google Scientist Resigns Over “Forfeiture of Our Values” in China......raised concerns that Google secretly developed
a Chinese search app for Android devices designed to remove content that China’s authoritarian government does not like.
Removing information about:
<><> political dissent,
<><> free speech,
<><> democracy,
<><> human rights,
<><> peaceful protest.
How convenient that Google had already designed that very same search app for Democrats.
Communist China can give thanks to Democrats and to Google.
Thanks for the mention. I do use one, so could be...