Google looks set to abolish a feature that allows users to navigate to the previous page by hitting the backspace key, after complaints piled up against the option.

However, it would seem that a small number of users will be very unhappy with the planned change.

The subtle tweak can apparently be seen in Chrome 52, which is currently only available as an unstable "Developer" version.

Users who want to have backspace functioning only as backspace in the current stable version—Chrome 50—can use one of the few extensions that have been available for several years now.

According to the project's development calendar, a stable version of Chrome 52 is estimated for release on July 26, 2016.

Google's developer Ojan Vafai explained why the backspace behaviour—which takes its roots from older browsers like Netscape Navigator—would be removed:

We have UseCounters showing that 0.04 percent of page views navigate back via the backspace button and 0.005 percent of page views are after a form interaction. The latter are often cases where the user loses data. Years of user complaints have been enough that we think it's the right choice to change this given the degree of pain users feel by losing their data and because every platform has another keyboard combination that navigates back.

Vafai added that the team has implemented the change via a flag, so that it could be reverted "should there be sufficient outcry."

Indeed, outcry—while limited—has already started to appear in the discussions part of Chromium's bug tracker.

Hardcore users defending backspace-powered navigation said that the alternatives—pressing Alt+Left or clicking the Back button in the top left corner of the window—were too cumbersome and inconvenient.

"We're definitely aware of the frustration that this causes users who have come to rely on the shortcut," Tyler Odean, Google's senior product manager, commented.

"We're working to release an extension that will allow users to restore this behaviour. However for users who don't understand the behaviour of the shortcut, which is the majority of users, the loss of data is also super frustrating and they are less equipped to understand or prevent their frustrations."