Yahoo, breaking its silence in connection with My Way's launch, recently responded in a statement to the Associated Press. "A simple ad-free site does not provide value to consumers' lives if it does not incorporate the leading technology, compelling products or an understanding of consumers," Yahoo said. Ouch! No value?! At first glance, that sounds rather harsh. But maybe we shouldn't take it so hard. Let's dissect their feelings about My Way for a minute. "Simple" - Our goal is to create a clutter-free environment to provide more room for our world-class content and functionality. Call us crazy, but we view simple as a good thing. "Ad-free" - Guilty as charged. No banners. No pop-ups. No kidding. (more) "Does not incorporate the leading technology" - Not that you really care, but My Way features a technology platform built on the best of commercial and open-source solutions (Apache, PHP, Linux, PERL...), using hardware from EMC, Dell, Cisco and more. How does this benefit My Way users? In a recent performance test, My Way's top pages loaded up to 51% faster than corresponding pages on Yahoo. This, according to Keynote - the leader in Internet performance measurement. "Compelling products" - Maybe we're confused, but is Yahoo actually suggesting that people are not going to use My Way because, without pop-under ads, we're unable to sell them mini-spy cameras? Is that what they mean by compelling products? "Understanding of consumers" - We strongly believed that the idea of a great portal and search engine in a banner- and pop-up-free environment had real consumer appeal. To confirm it, we had InsightExpress conduct independent market research. We learned that 77% of Yahoo users would "definitely" or "probably" use My Way. Most importantly, however, is the feedback that we have received from Yahoo users who are now using - and very much enjoying - My Way. Based on these comments, we honestly feel we have created the best user experience on the Web, and we will continue to deliver value to our users in the years ahead. So, no hard feelings, Yahoo. As a rule, we try to find the good in every comment we receive.