I'm just guessing, but it seems likely Airbnb see themselves as "underdogs, displacing the hotel industry". The fact that they care so much how EJ phrased her post after her home was completely destroyed (look around you right now --- imagine all of that being gone and never coming back) indicates they have an ego to match. So no, pg can't help them, and no one else can either. It's up to them to fix or break their billion-dollar company.
It's obvious that AirBnB only cares about attempting to spin it. I'm more curious if pg is going to work "how (not) to handle a PR crisis" into the YCombinator syllabus.
I wonder what pg thinks about this.