I’ve generally found that forcing people to dedicate time to read and discuss a design is more fruitful than a google doc

Alternatively, the people who are scheduled for the meeting are guaranteed to spend 15 reviewing the subject and having their questions answered in a timely fashion. All of the stakeholders are likely in the room so a decision can actually be made.

It forces real-time immediate interaction and discussion rather than dealing with people that have varying levels of understanding and who may or may not have bothered to actually read the whole thing. And it forces all of the comments and suggestions to be hashed out in 30-60 minutes, rather than over weeks as people only check the doc maybe once a day if you are lucky so every back and forth takes forever, especially when a lot of it is dealing with the aforementioned sources of understanding.

A single hour-long in-person meeting can forgo a month of back-and-forth online.

Sounds better than the alternative, which I'm all too familiar with.

"Did everyone get a chance to read the doc I added to the calendar entry last night? No? Ok, I'll just review the main points. So for starters, let's go talk about why we're here...."