Yes - I just noticed this the other day. I normally have Google as my home page but whenever I try to set this in the preferences it immediately reverts to Apple's home page. Very annoying.
Is there any other product that Apple has designed to easily set it to display a Windows, Google, Android, or Linux logo when you first launch it???
Could be accidental. Or it could be that Tim noticed that the homepage might display a competitors logo when launched. And perhaps he didn’t like that.