A little in the fact they are not gaining profit from it
They do through the Google Earth cloud compute engine. https://earthengine.google.com/
What most users see as Google Earth is the free end user version but it is monetised for enterprise use.
There is. And it’s pretty clear. Airspace over land is not under the control of the landowner. Bernstein of Leigh v Skyviews & General Ltd - Wikipedia
The judge said:
“I can find no support in authority for the view that a landowner’s rights in the air space above his property extend to an unlimited height.”
And determined that an owner of land has rights in the air space above his land only to such a height as is necessary for the ordinary use and enjoyment of his land and the structures upon it.
This is the relatively untested bit in terms of drones but it would be on the owner to demonstrate that it was causing a nuisance which is actually quite a high threshold, and distinct from trespass. It’s already pretty established by the fact that drones constantly overfly all sorts of different peoples’ land and neither the police, courts nor CAA care about that, that you would probably ordinarily have to be doing something that would fall under the privacy rules of drone flying, or causing such a noise at unsociable hours with the drone right over someone’s home for that to kick in at all.
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Note only that the wording in the Bernstein v Skyviews judgement is superseded by the wording in the Civil Aviation Act, s.76. But it has the same general effect i.e. you can fly without worrying about either nuisance or trespass if all circumstances of the flight are “reasonable”.
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The problem only arises when you want to sell the photograph. You would then need a property release from the owner to sell the photograph.
And the tower bridge example I gave earlier ?
If you take an image of Tower Bridge you need a permit to sell it.
If its is for editorial use only, no permits or permissions are required but they then have very little or no sales value.
High quality video however, even for editorial use still can attract a bit of money.
So if I take an arial photo of a building I need a property release from the owner to sell it. If its taken above a city, what about all the other buildings in the image. Thats a lot lof property releases.
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Submit the photo to a stock image site and then you’ll find out what type of use they will allow 
Go on, back this up.
This page gives the normal position under the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act (the law is slightly different in some other countries):
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to quote .gov.uk
I want to take photos of sculptures and buildings located in public spaces You do not need permission to photograph buildings, sculptures and similar works on public display in public spaces. The photographs you take are afforded full copyright protection. This means you, as the photographer, are able to commercially use your work.
and then
(and then the copyright exception for buildings as posted by @kvetner )