Bing isn’t a bad search engine. I just don’t use it as much because Google is on the upper right corner of Safari and a Control-Click in most other applications.

could I change it back?

since Bing delivers the worst results I got since 1996 ...

It REALLY pains me to say it but…

IE has one advantage over Safari. You can choose whatever search engine you want for the default. The same is true of FireFox.

Apple needs to update Safari, it’s getting a little stale.

Same goes for Omniweb…

I would have to think that you could change it back, apple might change the default, which most people would never think to change, but in 3.1 you can choose google or yahoo.
I suspect those options would still be there, just the phone would ship with bing as the default.

OmniWeb does allow you to change search engines. Click the magnifying glass in the Search field and choose “Edit Search Shortcuts…”, and add an entry for Bing with the url:
http://www.bing.com/search?q=%@

Using Terminal you can change the default search engine in Safari, do a “Google Search” for instructions.

Glims for Safari adds a number of search engines and other features. I’ve been using it for 6 months now and have not had any problems with it. http://www.machangout.com/

I’ll believe this when I see it. I sounds like a crock to me. Suddenly the interweb is full of quotes from nameless, faceless sources trying to create a perception that Apple and Google hate each others guts. This sounds more like middle school cafeteria gossip than anything that could be dignified as “analysis”. I think Apple has much more in common with Google than with Microsoft.