these apps appear to be doing exactly what they claim to be doing, or at least the articles don't make a claim otherwise and (at least for extensions, google has a strict policy about do-only-on-thing - i just got flagged and thankfully reinstated). CA was quite different - the app appeared to be doing one thing, but was actually doing a very different thing. and from my experience, facebook permissions are so broad as to be useless (which allowed me to make a kinda cool app but is scary)

wouldn't be surprised if there are bad apples in this ecosystem too - google can't take their policies too far or it will turn into a walled garden, but for the most part it's just users choosing convenience over sanity