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Q6. GPS: What about Privacy and Data Mining at Yahoo?

Usama Fayyad: Yahoo! was built around consumer trust and it has been our number one priority since day one. We would never do anything to compromise our users privacy and part of my role here at Yahoo! is to continue that tradition moving forward. In fact, one of my primary goals as Chief Data Officer, is to insure the "responsible use of data" in the words of our CEO, Terry Semel. Yahoo!, perhaps more than any other online consumer company, understands that the long-term survival and health of the business is built on consumer trust. In fact, one of the things that attracted me to Yahoo! was the company's extremely conservative position towards privacy. Both are CFO and our COO always remind me of "long-term" value as opposed to what might appear to be a short-term bonanza. I truly respect that focus and it comes from the founders: Jerry Yang and David Filo.

As an example, when a competitor with a new mail product announced that they will target e-mail based on the content of the message, Yahoo! came out clearly saying that we will not do this. We consider the contents of your email as private information. Though funded by advertising, it represents an implicit assumption by the consumer that the content of the communication is private. This is a difference Yahoo! is extremely sensitive about: the expectation the consumer has as to whether they are in a "public space" or a "private space". The analogy I use is this: when you are in the shopping mall, you accept sales people approaching you or helping you find a product. When you are in your home, a sales person showing up in your living room would be an intrusion. As an officer representing Yahoo!, I will always err on the conservative side whenever faced with a judgment call. I find the public space/private space analogy very helpful in my reasoning about the subject.