John Battelle was interviewed on The Podcast Network's Gadget Show. Download the MP3 here. The discussion of the sustainability of Google's Don't Be Evil ethic starts at 15:25.

Q: Are they really not evil? There are a lot of people saying that they don’t believe it.

Battelle: That’s a tough motto to keep up with, I think. It’s inherently well intentioned, but also inherently subjective.

So the more people that attempt to hold you to that standard, the more subjective standards there are. So what’s evil in China versus what’s evil in the United States is one big example. What’s evil to owners of copyright, intellectual property, versus what’s evil to teenagers who have no money but want to share part of culture? It’s very, very subjective.

So it’s hard to hold that up as a model for your company. I think it doesn’t scale. Which is probably one of the few things about Google that doesn’t scale.