I really hope this isn't going to become a standard thing. There are still plenty of people like me who are stuck with something like satellite internet, which forces us to micromanage our data usage. I can't afford to just have things auto-updating whenever they want.
I think people are starting to realize that you cannot always live on the bleeding edge, even then the edge is not that sharp.
IIRC Firefox ESRs (extended support releases) do not update automatically. Or they update automatically but only to other infrequent ESRs.
I'm pretty sure you can disable automatic updates in any version of Firefox.
In the ESR editions, you certainly can disable them. It's an essential feature -- imagine being the manager of 20,000 desktops when they all auto-update at once, consuming all the bandwidth, simultaneously stopping the work of every employee in the enterprise, creating hundreds or more support calls, and breaking the corporate intranet.
And yes, ESR editions update only to other ESR editions.
I think he made a good use case for this browser, why is could work as a standalone product and why it can't stand alone in the market.
It has its upsides as well, you generally only need to target the latest stable version of Chrome.
That is an upside for developers; for users, there is an additional cost to using your website (i.e., updating Chrome, which they do seem to make as easy as possible).