No.

"In this day and age that doesn't make sense."

It didn't make sense when they semi-officially had that policy either, particularly if you consider how relatively young of a company Google is (granted, "young" is subjective, I'm 40 years old). But when you're incubated in academia and turn out to be very successful, it is easy to think that your best bet is to keep one and a half feet firmly planted in that world.

Of course, Google isn't/wasn't alone, lots of companies have lots of policies that don't really make any sense outside of whatever echo chamber they've created for themselves.

For at least some non-technical positions, a college degree was required, although not for any reason I ever understood.