The author is missing the point. Chrome does not market its version number, and transparently updates itself in the background. I'd imagine the vast majority of Chrome users have no idea what major version their browser is on - I sure didn't until I took a look.

Unlike previous number races, Chrome's rapidly increasing version numbers do not indicate a will to impress consumers with high values. Instead, Chrome takes a page from web applications, and makes the version number irrelevant to the vast majority of its users.

Firefox seems to be trying to do the same, but IMO it's putting the cart before the horse. It should improve its update mechanism until version numbers do not matter, and then update the major version as often as it wants to.