Oh I'm entirely serious. Obviously nobody thinks that nobody else has ever lost data by accidentally pressing backspace, but I think most people can agree that it's simply not a good enough reason to completely remove such an established feature.
If you read the comments on the bug it's lots of people's position that losing data isn't real ("I've never had it happen", "Chrome remembers form data", etc). That's a silly position since it does happen, and this kind of error is the one that generally affects novices the most who are the least capable to deal with it or understand what happened.
If you've ever lost data and especially don't know why/how, then you know that super sucks and shouldn't ever happen period. Removing this prevents data loss, that's a UX win.
It's bizarre that it's happening in 2016, but better late than never. You still have power user alt/cmd-left so the keyboard can navigate, and if you're super duper keyboard person then you can install one of the vim navigation extensions or use an extension that preserves the backspace.
You say established feature, but I bet if you surveyed something like 20% or less would know about this.
