I don't get why root access is so much worse than any other problem: 1. Apps like Skype already allow themselves access to so much sensitive and private inform

I don't get why root access is so much worse than any other problem: 1. Apps like Skype already allow themselves access to so much sensitive and private information and things like the Motorola spyware uncovered recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5973282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5973282 ) are so bad that I find the extra evilness possible with root access not so significant. What amount of additional harm would it really be? Intercepting network traffic? Better hidden rootkit that even hides from the few users who have jailbroken their phone? 2. The Linux kernel regularly has security bugs and we know that Android phone manufactures don't update devices timely or at all. Wouldn't every Android phone not have at least one exploit for the kernel itself at any given point in time? Where are the apps that just use this to gain root access? Or has Google hardened the kernel well enough that there are no known exploits by which an APK with native code doing syscalls can increase it's privileges?