This was absolutely terrible for battery life, though. Accidentally leave the IRC client open in the background? There goes your battery. There are non-nefarious reasons why smartphones work they way they do nowadays.
I still think my Sony Ericson p910i the best smartphone. Multiple human interfaces (the multi directional wheel is the greatest invention to be abandoned) in particular and a near fully functional OS that could do anything my computer could do
"My Android phone just died at 1pm with empty battery, I don't know why! I'm buying an iPhone!" complaints are something noone from the Android side of the market wants to continue hearing. Even if that means that you now need to have a notfication clearly telling you your battery is being drained.
Even if you want users to give indication of something running in background there are far less intrusive ways to achieve that. But if you can't come up with those ways and persistent notification is the best you could come up with then at least give the user the ability to turn it off without turning off background process?
They know the tendency of people to clear notifications as they clutter the phone and they use this small knowledge to push their own Software. At least follow same practice for Google apps but no because then that notification area would be complete mess.