The story says "Google had a reputation of hiring only people with computer science degrees." Dunno if it's true or not, I'm just curious.
Keep in mind this was 2003, Google had less than 2000 employees then.
It's never been an absolute policy, but they certainly used to prefer people with degrees; it's an easy filter when you've got a million CVs a year to parse through.
HR found it was useless as a predictor of success, though, and the policy was officially dropped last year: