The lead designer/director of user experience at Android right now is
Matias Duarte. This line in his CV is relevant:
wiki wroteSeptember 2007 — May 2010, Palm, Inc., as VP, Human Interface and User Experienc
A lot of the improvements in Android ICS/4.0 are taken directly from webOS, so yes it is a major step up for Android. But it just goes to show how far ahead of the curve Palm were with webOS and makes me wonder what they could have done if they got proper financial backing instead of that HP fiasco.