Yes and no. As a developer, I certainly love the relative ease and freedom of Google's Market. But as user, I don't want to fear clicking "Download" or "Buy". Apple succeeds, in part, because their App Store provides a certain measure of trust, and users are willing to open their wallets.
At a minimum, Google needs to respond quickly to malware reports, and to enforce anti-piracy rules vigorously. Allowing attackers to pirate and republish apps allows them to attack many more users than they could reach by developing malicious-but-popular applications from scratch.
And Apple has never let a "(benign) root exploit" through approval.
Yeah, I think that was an incorrect statement on my part. Apple has passed major, hidden functionality that violates their policies, but I was mistaken in thinking a root exploit was involved. For a mea culpa, see the thread at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2279823
Android allows installing apps from sources other than the Market, so this isn't that big a deal. A free-for-all app store does have disadvantages, like app spam, rampant copyright infringement, and apparently malware.
If you're a "I like to let anyone install anything in my phone" kind of person, I suppose so.
Isn't the appeal of Google's app store that it isn't curated? Anyone can sign up and submit anything.
And Apple has never let a "(benign) root exploit" through approval.