During the course of the All Things Digital conference on Wednesday, the 26-year-old Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg spoke in defense of the contentious and much-criticized privacy changes introduced to the social networking service. Zuckerberg also said that he currently has no timeline in mind for Facebook’s potential IPO.

Saying that Facebook will persist with making what it believes are the right changes, even though some of them make rake controversies, Zuckerberg specified that the new features like “Instant personalization” – which automatically end up sharing users’ personal information with third-party websites - are a part of Facebook’s innovative strategies.

Zuckerberg told All Things Digital: “Certainly on a day-to-day basis if we didn't disrupt things that would be the easiest way to proceed. But we don't believe that if we did that we'd be doing the best thing for us long-term or for the industry.”

The approximately 50-minute-long on-stage interview, during which a number of issues were addressed, Zuckerberg also dismissed earlier reports on tech blogs that Facebook is working on a Web-based email service which will be a potential threat to Google’s Gmail and Yahoo.

In response to questions whether he would remain the Facebook CEO even after the company went public, Zuckerberg - who co-founded Facebook in a Harvard dorm room in 2004 - said he would, and added that he does not “think about going public ... much.”