Yet another sign of things we'd rather not see from the wireless carriers:

Verizon has unilaterally updated user Storm 2 BlackBerries and other smartphones so that their browser search boxes can only be used with Microsoft Bing. The move is part of the five-year search and advertising deal Verizon signed with Microsoft in January for a rumored $500m.

Looks like it's limited to a couple of phones so far (and notably, not the android phones) - and doesn't limit where you go in the browser, just in the built in search function. Still, this is a bad sign - with mobil devices, we are headed towards something that looks a lot more like the old AOL than the web we've come to know...

Technorati Tags: search, verizon, bing