iOS does offer a slightly nicer three tiered request strategy over Google's yes|no. iOS let's you grant location access only when the app is active
The pretty large plurality (if not majority) of Android devices in the wild don't have have Google's services installed and many of those also get no software updates -- so they're stuck on what old ROM they came with, probably Lollipop.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
That's because they count all the pings of devices that answered across the globe in a sliding window and that is a hugely different number than actual maket share across US and EU and comparable markets. Sure we can then go into details about how poor Indians / Chinese / Africans need secure phones too (and I agree!), but those people have no means to afford an iPhone either.
(And no, sorry, I can't provide you with NDA protected market data :/ )
Of course, thanks to the Android ecosystem, it will take another year or two until a significant portion of people actually switches to devices running Android 6.
Slower than iOS yes, but not as alarming anymore.
[1]: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html
Huh? Can you please, concretely, elaborate on how this app makes it easy for other "rogue apps" to access your personal data? Or how is this any significantly different from iCloud Find my Friends feature - especially since iCloud has very interesting exceptions for privacy data collection in EULA.
Or if I say it differently - if you actually read EULAs and what both companies collect, there is no privacy difference between Apple in Google when it comes to cloud services.
The raised concerns about tracking are VERY valid - but they are valid (as you said) for both platforms and calling iOS as "more secure" in this respect is extremely misleading and gives false sense of security. After all, iOS ships the feature BY DEFAULT, thus creating all the pressures you mentioned. Android doesn't.