The point is of course to make it annoying to manually update apps and enable auto update. I have been burned too many times with a auto update so I refuse.
This wasn't enough, they really want to force me enable auto updates to the point of the update section of the app having 50% of the visible space on my big screen being covered with a message to enable auto update over WiFi. [0]
Whoever is doing this at Google... Stop. Just stop. It is cringe.