Is Google Earth a GIS or Remote Sensing program?

Answer 1

Google buys pictures from satellite owners and from companies that take aerial photographs.

Answer 2

Those are global images. It actually takes pictures.

A remote sensor is more like a weather satellite. It doesn't take pictures, it senses movement. With weather satellites, if there's no movement in the atmosphere, the doppler circuits won't sense anything, and there will be a blank image generated. Any image actually broadcast with the blank image would be generated artificially by preprogrammed map cards. (My own radar used 8 different map cards with 8 overlayed maps of the same area, each map with a different purpose.)