"Pending approval from your manager/lead"
- Corporate doublespeak for Don't even think about going full time remote. We are going to drag you back kicking and screaming.
It's obviously purposefully non-committal, which makes sense, as Google leadership clearly is not inclined to want to be remote-first.
Lots of stuff is really group-specific at many firms. Google aims to be more top-down than most companies its size about these sorts of things, but it's a valid model to say some-teams-this-is-acceptable-some-it-is-not.
it is a typical corporate doublespeak and approach for stratification of perks - the higher strata would easily be granted the approval, no questions asked, while the lower - what you described.
