Why not give employees the choice? Google already claims to hire 'the best'; do they not trust 'the best' to capably manage their own productivity wrt wherever they decide to work?
Well, it's explicitly stated that productivity is not their top priority, right? "We’ll move to a hybrid work week where most Googlers spend approximately three days in the office and two days wherever they work best." That's an explicit recognition that they're expecting not to get the best work from a bunch of people for approximately three days a week; presumably senior management is fine with this, or they wouldn't have done it or said it.
They're explicitly recognizing that for three days a week, a bunch of people will not be where they individually work best.
That doesn't necessarily mean their top priority isn't productivity, because the productivity of an organization is not simply the sum of the individual, independent productivities of its members.
They may, for instance, believe something along the following lines. 1. All else being equal, most people are more productive individually at home than in the office. 2. Individuals' productivity in the office is higher when other people are also in the office, because they can cooperate. 3. Individuals' productivity is better directed (i.e., the stuff they're productive at is a better match for the actual needs of the company) if at least some of the time they're physically in the same place as their colleagues. Without that, they may work more efficiently but they are less likely to be working on the right things. 4. Because of 3 (backed up by 2) the amount of value provided to the company is greater when employees spend some time together in the office.
Whether any of that is actually true is another matter. And of course they may also just like the power-trip of seeing all their minions working busily. But it's not true that the words you quoted have to mean that productivity isn't what they care about most.
(In case it matters to anyone: I am not a Googler, have no interest in watching minions working busily and furthermore have no minions, and much prefer working from home though whether I'm actually more productive there I don't know.)
That seems to be what they are doing. They are estimating that 20% of the company will be permanently remote. Last I saw, something like 25% of the company expressed interest in permanent remote work. So in most cases people will have the choice.
