Of course it's not that simple. There are other ways to gain leverage over Google and the Chrome development process than money. But money is the easiest one for enterprises, especially if they boast their multi-million-dollar programs, so there at least seems to be a cashflow of considerable size depending on Chrome, of which a tiny part may possibly be diverted. And for a lot of enterprises that are not exactly at Google-scale, paying for it and hence being able to request support (and maybe even make Google pay for some of the monetary damages, depending on how the contracts are written) is the only feasible option to motivate Google.
However, Chromium being open-source, there is always the possibility of taking matters into your own hand here as an alternative to the above. That doesn't come free of charge as well, of course, the money just ends up somewhere else than Google.
One thing is "well, your experiment broke our <detailed information of setup>, is there some instructions on how to disable it?" So, well, showing humbleness since this is a software that you're using for free.
The other thing is the way that was described by the article: "I am a sysadmin from a multi zillion enterprise, your idiotic experiment broke our setup. Disable this ASAP and never do something similar ever again".
These people had a voice, the problem was solved and reverted in 1.5 day. If they had paid, they would've had direct line and it potentially would've been fixed within hours instead.
However, Chromium being open-source, there is always the possibility of taking matters into your own hand here as an alternative to the above. That doesn't come free of charge as well, of course, the money just ends up somewhere else than Google.