I realize that it's too late to cry over spilled milk, but that was one of the reasons for which Firefox OS was developed. We wanted to push a different permission model in which permissions were much more fine-grained and could be audited and revoked easily. Sadly, one of the reactions of the development community (including HN commenters) at the time was along the lines of "Android is just fine".

I understand that recent versions of Android have moved towards adopting a permission model closer to that of Firefox OS, though, and I suspect that the example given by Firefox OS at least showed that it was possible.

P.S.: Yes, Firefox OS had other problems. Let's not try and idealize the past :)