Yes, I notice that too. The engine layout is a little different though.

The QuadShot seemed a bit difficult to control. The automatic control and/or the larger size seemed to help the Google drone to be more stable.

It is an interesting design choice. I hope to see more updates soon!

I also wonder if the Google drone uses a symmetric airfoil (no lift at level flight) like the QuadShot, or if they use a standard wing design. The symmetric airfoil obviously makes control easier when in vertical (quadrotor) flight, but loses efficiency and stability in horizontal (plane) flight.

I have a QuadShot and it's not too difficult to control. I think with a good control system the airframe could work pretty well. The QuadShot is quite lightweight, has all its mass centered, and has a pretty large wing cross-section which makes it difficult to fly in the wind though. I also don't feel that the QuadShot's firmware was ever quite nailed down completely - I feel that there's still a lot more stability to be gained by tweaking PIDs and improving the control system, or by adding additional inputs like optical flow.

The Google device probably benefits a lot from being bigger as it's difficult to substitute for inertia.

I've never flown a QuadShot though I recently (last weekend) saw one flown at Baylands park down in Sunnyvale. I noticed it never really looked like the pilot was "in control"