Admittedly a guess at part of his motivation for saying this follows:
Google is a target to get sued in patent disputes or when the Justice Department needs to score some points. It's less risky to every business when you can talk about things in meetings and nothing borderline-illegal is ever written down. Then, at your congressional hearing or deposition, you can say "I don't recall" or "that never happened" without risk of a smoking gun being produced that risks some perjury charge, fines, etc.
He's just guessing, given his own biases, which is really disappointing in an engineer. He's quoted as saying, "[remote] I don’t know how you build great management. I honestly don’t." So go find out, perhaps?
Hybrid working is also not what you are used to, Eric, so you are not going to get what you expect from it.
Google is a target to get sued in patent disputes or when the Justice Department needs to score some points. It's less risky to every business when you can talk about things in meetings and nothing borderline-illegal is ever written down. Then, at your congressional hearing or deposition, you can say "I don't recall" or "that never happened" without risk of a smoking gun being produced that risks some perjury charge, fines, etc.