In a move that can only logically result in a flying army of sentient, autonomous machines intent on harvesting humans, Google announced today that it is buying startup drone-maker Titan Aerospace.

Other than hastening the final days of humankind, why would Google be interested in drones? It’s not like Amazon or UPS, where the doom-copters could be used (prior to their inevitable uprising) to deliver parcels directly to consumers.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google believes there are multiple ways in which the drones could be used in addition to blackening the daylight sky and raining down hellfire on civilization.

They could be integrated in to Google’s existing Project Loon, which uses high-altitude balloons to provide Internet service to parts of the world lacking standard Internet connectivity. Titan claims its drones can help deliver speeds of up to 1Gbps, the same speed that the best fiber-to-the-home currently aims to deliver, and many times faster than most people receive through standard cable broadband.

Then there’s Google’s Makani thingamajig, which is trying to develop an airborne wind turbine that can efficiently generate energy (which can then, one presumes, be used to power the ungodly army of drones that will destroy all but the few humans willing to do the drones’ bidding).

The drones can also be used for real-time, hi-res aerial photography and mapping; all the better to inform the soon-to-be self-aware flying bringers of doom.

Google joins Facebook in welcoming our new drone overlords. Facebook had previously courted Titan but recently announced the acquisition of a different drone company. Like Google, the mammoth social networking operation hopes to use drones bring Internet connectivity to currently underserved areas.

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