The fact that the policy is company wide certainly lends more pressure towards returning to the office. That being said something can be mandated but poorly enforced. In the Google case, it appears that the enforcement is tuned down by an (apparently) usable exception mechanism. One can infer based on this, that in the language of the article, the new policy is somewhere between “mandated” and “optional”. With all due respect, I think you are being overly pedantic.