Monty, I'm not the only skeptic...
Another Orlando-based firm, World Surveillance Group, sells similar equipment to the US Army and other government agencies.
However, they typically remain airborne for up to a few days at a time rather than for months, and are not as wide-ranging. One expert cautioned that Google might find it harder to control its fleet than it hoped.
"The practicalities of controlling lighter-than-air machines are well known because of the vagaries of the weather," said Prof Alan Woodward, visiting professor at the University of Surrey's department of computing.
"It's going to take a lot of effort to make these things wander in an autonomous way and I think it may take them a little longer to get right than they might believe."
