Honestly I think Google has already lost its prestige. But it's not just RTO that's doing it, it's the politically toxic way they did their round of layoffs. RTO is not going to save them, they lost their mojo years ago, and they're now in a spiral towards being an IBM-style "legacy" company and the layoffs (which were just about playing to the stock market) just cemented that. That's the general consensus I see both from Xooglers and Googlers I talk to.

But also in addition to demanding RTO, their actual office situation sucks now. In the years before I quit Google (after 10 years of being there) they just made the actual office experience worse and worse. Cramming people in like sardines. Open concept noisy auditorium workspaces. Messing up the parking situation and requiring people to park and walk 10 minutes away while they ripped up the parking lot to build new castles to cram people into. Overhiring and overstaffing into dubious projects. Lowering quality of food and other perks. And during WFH if you actually wanted to come in there was a whole song and dance about reserving desks, and not getting any kind of permanent comfortable workstation.

I don't like working remotely. But I also despised the commuting situation; I was willing to tolerate it while the office was a pleasant environment. COVID ruined that.

Google started on the path to not being a "cool" company to work at when Ruth Porat came on as CFO. She did great things for the stock price, but long term bad things for the culture of the company.