“A long winded way of saying the Android phone felt like it’d been designed by a search engine company rather than one that’d spent the better part of 30 years making desirable, innovative consumer electronics and software?”

No. the UI on the Desire (Sense UI) is written by HTC, it just runs on top of the Android operating system. Everything from the on-screen keyboard to the way you copy and paste in different apps has been modified by HTC.

Large parts of it are still Google’s, but you have to be careful when making blanket statements about Google’s OS when large parts of the bits you use aren’t theirs. Obviously this is ignoring the app store, although on that note…

“I tried very hard to find any kind of game or app that came close to the beautiful stuff you see on even the worst of the Apple store”

I would happily invite you to compare the fart sound applications from either store.