So as an example, if I had a lot of aerial photography of an area taken with a drone, would this be something I should research to stich together all of the raw / separate photographs into a map?
No, but once you had stitched together your photos and made a (georeferenced) map you could use this to combine those photos with terrain data and vector data you have from other sources and present the combined data in a google earth like viewer.
One advantage is that you can now host that viewer and the data on your own server (with any access restrictions you may wish to add) and even make the whole thing available for offline viewing.
One advantage is that you can now host that viewer and the data on your own server (with any access restrictions you may wish to add) and even make the whole thing available for offline viewing.