My experience of Quip is very similiar to how you described Dropbox Paper (which I haven't used): write, get feedback with in-line comments, collaborate, and forget the whole thing. But it's nice, slim, and fast.
I don't think this post was limited on side projects. Many people reading this are working, or will work in environments where safety and correctness are important, if not critical.
He says that he got rid of the documents, there's no way to verify it. I think there are no reasons to take his statements at the face value, given the players involved in the overall situation -- the world's top intelligence agencies.
The decision rules that it would be Google's responsibility to filter search results, instead of the responsibility of actual page removing private data. So you can find the data if you know where to look at, just don't use Google?
