I was under the impression that, because Google would have to execute all of that logic in order to even get the content people are searching for -- as I can't

I was under the impression that, because Google would have to execute all of that logic in order to even get the content people are searching for -- as I can't imagine an empty page would actually rank highly for anything ;P -- that they weren't using the time of the first request but the time it took to get the content that they decided was the page.