Big companies are typically older. They were created and grew in an environment that knew nothing _but_ the office. Having amazing(ly expensive) offices were prized social signals for them and were huge attractors of great talent, especially when residential Internet sucked so hard in comparison.
They also employed tons of people in the area outside of tech (property managers, facilities, janitorial staff, accounts, etc.) and were embedded into their communities.
Also, their DNAs were built _around_ the office. I can easily sympathize with them saying that collaboration happens easiest when everyone's in the office; the leaders saying this likely can't imagine another way of working!
Asking a company as big as Google to simply give all of that up and rent WeWorks isn't impossible, but is a huge, huge ask. While some groups can easily switch to a remote workflow, as companies, they just aren't mentally or physically equipped to do that without a significant number of breaking changes.
That said, _my_ problem with how they are going about it is that they are walking back on their incredibly enthusiastic support for remote work during COVID-times _without saying why_.
Nobody's going out there and saying "So we were super excited about remote work, but after seeing a 30% drop in "productivity" year-over-year, we knew it couldn't be sustained." (This is a fake reason; I have no idea what the numbers are). They also aren't saying "We can't give up our office spaces without significantly wrecking the community that formed around us." Instead, their giving platitudes like "collaboration happens best in the office" and leaving us to conjecture the change of heart.
I love the fact that smaller companies are making remote work work for them, but I'm afraid that so long as big tech gets bigger, the effect is temporary at best.