Generally it just means less clients per server which results in higher pricing. The general benefits are that you would be less likely to be affected by others and some providers will give you larger resource allocations as there is more to go around.
It’s just a way of marketing higher end / more performant shared hosting for the most part. Some providers give it a special name and some do not.
No idea, never used Google Cloud.
There are a lot of terrible providers out there that make silly marketing claims but as far as I know HostXNow isn’t one of them. I may not always agree with Chris but he’s a reasonable guy and seems to run a reasonable company.
I think HawkHost also markets semi-dedicated.
You as well.