Maybe the standards process is broken, in which case that's something that needs fixing. I can't see why the four browser makers can't create their own browser standards.
> We don't just ignore the autocomplete attribute, however. In the WHATWG standard, we defined a series of new autocomplete values that developers can use to better inform the browser about what a particular field is, and we encourage developers to use those types. [2]
In my opinion the new spec is overly-complicated and will probably not be followed by web developers, but on the other hand a binary "on"/"off" choice was way too blunt of an instrument. I don't know how the authors of the original autocomplete spec didn't see this coming.
The standard is that autocomplete attribute can be used to hint to the user-agent how to apply any autocomplete functionality it has.
The standard is not that the UA must provide autocompletion when it is "on", or must not do so when it is "off".
So, I don't see any problem with the standard and Chrome's behavior.