It makes good financial sense for a company to sell shares when the price is high and do stock buybacks when it's low. I guess they think the price is on the high side?

Also, selling shares puts them in a better position to survive a downturn (more cash, less debt).

In a real competitive market it would never make financial sense to do stock buybacks because competition is so fierce you need to invest it all in R&D and sharp prices for your customers. See the Chinese EV market.

Stock buybacks are also a tax trick.

They're just holistically evil and should have never been made legal.

Google is also issuing a bunch of debt this year. It sounds like they need a lot of capital and want to keep a particular debt/equity ratio, rather than having a strong opinion on their share price.