We all known the rivalry between Apple and Google continues, and it now appears that Apple has taken a bit of a swipe at Google in their new iPhone OS 4.0 as according to an article over on gizmodo when the guys over at ilounge they discovered the Google name has been removed from the Safari search button.

Apparently Safari settings enable a user to pick between Yahoo and Google as their default search engine and when doing so the moniker in the search box at the top will change to whichever you opt for, but as for the soft keyboard, its search button doesn’t show any website name.

This move of stripping Google from the search button could of course be a step towards Apple’s move to bringing Bing onto the iPhone as their default search engine, and makes sense that they would remove a rival’s branding from a prominent position in their OS.

In the past it has been said that Google fork out $100 million a year to Apple for their search agreement and one would have thought that would include having the Google moniker slapped on the iPhone keyboard, so whether that agreement has come to an end for whatever reason remains to be seen.