Inexcusable may be strong - but I wish I could find the thread I was referring to.

Perhaps they were working on it for a long time, but they were actively defending their stance for years after many people were requesting this, and after many incidents of Play Store apps intentionally doing more than expected (uploading contact lists, tracking location, etc...).

As someone who has developed and published Android apps, it was super frustrating to spend half your app description justifying each and every permission used, and still getting negative reviews simply because you had to request some scary looking permission for the most mundane feature addition.