I believe they mean from the perspective of the employer. If a team has been able to fully function these past two years and the employees prefer working from home, there's little — if any — justification the employer can make for the return to office.
It honestly really depends. I'm a Googler and work in a team/org that was already heavily distributed all over the world. I am located in Japan, work with people in Europe, US (both coasts), Australia, Taiwan. While me being in the office means I get to talk in person with some people that are in my team (but which I'm not directly working with because my projects are with people located elsewhere anyway), and it's a nice social environment, work-wise it makes no difference for me because the people I have meetings with, I exchange emails, IMs, send code reviews, etc are spread all over the world anyway.
I personally prefer working from home, I have my test devices here, I set up my own home office, I don't need to waste time commuting, I have more time to take care of things around my house and/or my family if needs be, and I actually find myself working more focused and wasting less time than I did when I was in the office. I know this is not for everyone but the fact that my other team members might or might not be in the office has pretty much 0 effect on my work performance because I wouldn't even know nor care about.
