I would guess many of you have used Google - it is one of the great success stories of the Internet age.

If you want to find anything, the first place to look is Google, the world's biggest search engine.

It has an image of being quirky, friendly, easy to use. The company motto is Don't be evil.

It was started by computer science undergraduates Larry Page and Sergey Brin, now worth more than $10bn each.

Even the name is a fluke. Apparently they intended to call it after the name given to the world's largest number - googol (wasn't that the answer to a question to a Major on Millionaire?) but got the spelling wrong, then realised the name googol.com had already been claimed, so stuck with Google. The rest, as they say, is history.

However, its image has been under threat recently - not least because at the end of last month, it announced the launch of a Chinese version.

This may seem commercially sensible and inevitable, given the enormity of the Chinese market. China has 110 million Internet users, second only to the US. The controversy, however, is that google.cn is to operate within the great firewall of China, meaning that it falls within the censorship of the Chinese authorities, who are sensitive to certain words or stories and edit them - words such as democracy and Tiananmen. Google's critics say it has put commercial considerations above the image and values it seeks to project.

Google is not alone in being criticised.

Earlier this month, for instance, Yahoo! was accused of providing information on a cyber-dissident to the Chinese police and representatives of certain Internet companies, including Google, are now to be questioned by American Congressmen who feel the companies have capitulated to Chinese pressure.

This is bad publicity, not least for Google, because it has always made a virtue of its ethical standards which, it is said, have now been fatally compromised.

For those of us who greatly value links with China, we welcome the breaking down of political, cultural and commercial differences and the creation of partnerships and the opening up of the world's largest economy. However, for Google, it is a significant step. Whether we agree with it or not, one thing is for sure - it is now a different company.