Google's "Ratner Moment" ?

Gerald Ratner has gone down in the annals of British business as the guy who sank his company by saying out loud what everyone knew, but didn't say....

(For those not familiar with the story, Ratners was a UK high street jewellers chain, but Mr Ratner effectively killed the company in 1991 with a speech to the Institute of Directors, when he joked that one of his firm's products was "total crap", and boasted that some of its ear rings were "cheaper than a prawn sandwich")

Anyway, it seems that Marissa Meyer may have been a touch too honest in Australia when she noted that (from TechCrunch):

“It really wasn’t like an elected, ordained motto” during an interview in Australia, adding “I think that ‘Don’t Be Evil’ is a very easy thing to point at when you see Google doing something that you personally don’t like; it’s a very easy thing to point out so it does get targeted a lot.”

To be fair, she's probably right (as was Mr Ratner) - you can't be good to all the people all the time - but it will be fun to watch the PR spinning on this one