Yes, it’s a dammed nuisance when travelling in China not to be able to find an internet café. Now, you should be able to find more, but at a price.

Google, the world’s largest search engine will now be offering Google services to China’s 110 million online users. Google is the latest internet company, after Yahoo and Microsoft to go to China. Critics say that this move will effectively help the China government to block websites and access to information with politically sensitive comments that the government does not approve of.

According to one internet media insider, the main taboos are the three Ts: Tibet, Taiwan and the Tiananmen massacre, and the two Cs: cults such as Falun Gong (type “Falun Gong” in the search engine from a Beijing computer and the only results that can be accessed are official condemnations), and criticism of the Communist party, though this list is frequently updated. The China government has developed sophisticated filters have been developed to block or limit access to “unhealthy information”, which includes human rights websites, such as Amnesty, foreign news outlets, such as the BBC, references to the Tiananmen Square massacre, criticism of the politburo as well as pornography. Of the 64 internet dissidents in prison worldwide, 54 are from China.

Google, along with Yahoo and Microsoft face sever criticism from free speech advocates, internet activists and politicians, some of whom are already asking how the company’s policy in China accords with its mission statement: to make all possible information available to everyone who has a computer or mobile phone. Julian Pain of Reporters Without Borders – a group that also has its website blocked in China – accused Google of hypocrisy. “This is very bad news for the internet in China. Google were the only ones who held out. So the Chinese government had to block information themselves. But now Google will do it for them,” he said. “They have two standards. One for the US, where they resist government demands for personal information, and one for China, where they are helping the authorities block thousands of websites.”