Google Chrome - Pavlonian Reinforcement?

I'm using Chrome 2.0.172.33 and I don't experience what you are describing.

I haven't seen this behavior myself, but assuming it's true...

"By emulating this behavior on page-based websites, where the back button now essentially takes you 'out of' the web site, is Google trying to train us not to use the back button"

I certainly hope not. It seems wrong to emulate what's "bad" about no refresh web applications -- that is not conforming to a convention built into the browsers since most people's first experience with a browser.

It's not going to change anyone's behavior, it's going to make them return to a browser that works the way they expect it to.

I remember having a conversation with an internal developer at my company where he was talking about how their team had removed all of the chrome around the page and did some javascript magic to make it very difficult to invoke refresh or back.

He was complaining that users didn't understand that refreshing "broke" the app and continued to find ways to block it. He was fighting a losing battle. You have to find a way to do something logical when the user hits refresh or back or you're going to spend more time adding kludge after kludge when users behave in your app the way they would in any other web based app.

The issue I was experiencing was that the back button would remain grayed out regardless of where I went... on Youtube. And only on Youtube.

Seeing how navigating a site with no back button is pretty much impossible (or at least very convoluted), I think it's safe to assume that it's more likely that this is a bug than some sort of grand conspiracy.

Let's put it in perspective: Google knows they're an underdog when it comes browsers and that surfers that use Chrome typically know how they can switch to other browsers if Chrome isn't working for them.