Hilarity Resulting from Unconscious Irony

This appeared in this morning's "Online Media Daily," quoted from Reuter's:

"In an on-stage interview with writer Ken Auletta of the New Yorker magazine, Schmidt said, "'Don't be evil' is meant to provoke internal debate over what constitutes ethical corporate behavior, rather than representing an absolute moral position."

Schmitt goes on to say that there is no "evilmeter" they can apply to test whether something is good or evil.

I read the quote to a co-worker who found the quote just as hilarious as I. Maybe it's the Midwestern Protestant training I received early in the development of my atheistic agnostic world view, but the phrase doesn't really allow for ambiguity. The philosophy behind it might. One would think that if something is on the "evil" side of the meter, one would cease, no? Well, no, if one follows Schmidt's logic:

"The goal of the company is not to monetize everything, the goal is to change the world.... We don't start from monetization. We start from the perspective of what problems do we have."

So, they don't start from monetization, they find out how they can monetize the solutions to problems. If a bridge for cars blocks a waterway needed for boats, is the bridge evil? One person's "solution" is another's problem. To make a better Google analogy, if an elephant sits on his trainer, killing him, is the elephant evil? I can't make the leap to evil being morally ambiguous. Even if one doesn't do "evil" it leaves a wide margin for behavior that, unintentionally or not, can do great harm.