I think it's difficult for a company not to be "evil" once they grow to the size of Google. A company of that size has to please too many stakeholders. I think Craigslist is the perfect model of how a company can avoid being evil -- stay small.
Paul, originally I heard "do no evil" as the motto, then after a bit it altered into the current "don't be evil". Was it ever the former or was that just Chinese whispers at the time? Personally, I prefer it.
If you're into educational theory, you might like Alfie Kohn's book No Contest: The Case Against Competition. It's a really good look at the systemic effects of competition. It touches on cheating among other things.
It's funny, these days I find myself mostly reading counter-intuitive stuff. I figure if it's intuitive, I'm probably smart enough to have figured it out already. This book (and his other book, Punished by Rewards) is a really good example of something that just diffs with your current knowledge.
