I'd be surprised if that was the case; they should be in a similar hiring position to Apple. They just seem... less interested in it.

And it's not just designers; it's everything around user experience. For instance, both Terminal.app and the Apple bluetooth keyboard (when plugged into USB) have class-leading latency. That wasn't designers, but it probably also wasn't accidental.

Mind you, the Apple today arguably isn't as good at this stuff as the Apple of a decade or so, and they really fall down in some areas (Apple Music grumble mutter).

Fair, from the outside it’s hard to tell the difference between low quality, poor management, or under staffing. What I can say is that Google’s design is somewhere between bad and inconsistent.