Yes, and from a security point of view it should be treated as hostile accordingly.
There is no need to actively circumvent Windows security like this. Firefox, among many other examples, is quite capable of automatically updating itself using a proper Windows service mechanism.
It's long past time that Google were called out on this one. Not only is it a potential security risk, it also interferes with backups of %AppData%, which is generally an area of Windows PCs that you do want to save regularly in case of disasters.
