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Ancestry and Ancestry.com

Munt 2021

Ancestry.com is owned by the Blackstone Group, a private equity company that aquired Ancestry.com as they saw that is was a valuable asset with a vast database of personal and historical information. With the current developments with Artificial Intelligence and the addition of DNA tracking the database of information will be important for many businesses across the board.

Having started off as a means to allow people to research their family trees the extent of personal information transcends that held by mere social networks. In a similar manner to social platforms such as Facebook, Ancestry (and other geneological platforms) encourages its users to upload information about themselves. Coupled with geneological information, this personal data can be used to establish connections that were previously not obviously known.

Having performed a fair amount of research for my main website the subject of ancestry and ancestry.com is a topic dear to my heart.

Having gone down a "rabbit-hole" after seeing something on a Facebook page and seeing many ads on the TV for Ancestry.com - the question of "Who Owns Ancestry.com?" came to the fore again. I have featured all of the genealogical websites on my main website - often less than favourably.

Researching your family tree is big business!

While I am not interested in researching my own family tree my interest in the history of the village has steered me to numnerous genealogy websites.

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Who Owns Ancestry.com?

The genealogyexplained.com website has a background on this. The connection to the Mormon Church (LDS). The relationship to other genealogy websites such as familysearch.com and myHeritage.com

Ancestry.com is owned by the Blackstone Group, which acquired it for $4.7 billion in August 2020. The Blackstone Group, a prominent American private equity firm, has guided Ancestry.com’s transition from a genealogical research entity to a high-value tech company, capitalizing on its robust database and subscription services.

As the company has massive amounts of data, which today is considered gold, you can expect they have changed ownership quite a bit. In 2007, a private equity company named Spectrum Equity took 30% ownership. Just two years later, Ancestry went public in 2009 with a $100 million IPO (initial public offering).

Paul Allen and Dan Taggart

In 1990, two Brigham Young University (BYU) graduates, Paul Allen and Dan Taggart, began compiling LDS publications. Eventually, this collection would go on to be called Infobases, and after much of their compilations were stored on floppy discs and compact discs, their collections only grew! The company, at first, sold mainly LDS discs from the founder’s car, and as their stored publication became larger, Infobases was on Inc.’s top 500 fastest-growing companies. This was before people realized how data would go on to become tangibly profitable for larger companies. 1996 was the first year that Ancestry went online, and Infobases’ parent company, Western Standard Publishing, purchased Ancestry Inc. The two founders of Infobases would go on to purchase Western Standard’s interest in Ancestry Inc. and after the purchase, the company gradually snowballed, becoming larger and larger.

MyHeritage.com

MyHeritage is owned by Francisco Partners, a global private equity firm focused on tech investments. Acquired in February 2021, the deal reportedly amounted to around $600 million. Despite the acquisition, the company retained its foundational team, with Gilad Japhet remaining as the CEO, preserving the firm’s mission to foster easy family history discoveries through technological advancements.

About Marc McDermott

The text below is a quote from the MyHeritage website (I need to check this):

I’m Marc McDermott, an investigative genetic genealogist fueled by an unwavering passion for genealogy. As a dedicated member of the National Genealogical Society and an active volunteer for the DNA Doe Project, I’m committed to utilizing my expertise to create a meaningful impact in the field.

Marc McDermott has no connection to this website.

The DNA Doe Project

This needs to be investigated further..................

Artificial Intelligence

In addiition to the aspects of the use of DNA techniques to trace your ancestry, the fact that this will be coupled with Artificial Intelligence and the databases will be pretty much maintained automatically.

Frankly I am surprised that nobody seems to be over concerned with this aspect bearing in mind all the other "doom and gloom" and warnings of how A.I. is going to take-over the world! I am waiting for the first story about someone being refused insurance as a consequence of building their family tree using AncestryDNA. Of even not getting an employment opotunity as it had been determined that you were related to a serial killer from a long-lost-past.

GEDCOM

GEDCOM (GEnealogical Data COMmunication) is the database that was created by LDS to provide both a means to store geneological information and to enable the upload/download and interchange of geneological information between systems.

The Wikipedia page says:

GEDCOM (/ˈdʒɛdkɒm/ JED-kom), complete name FamilySearch GEDCOM, is a de facto open file format specification to store genealogical data, and import or export it between compatible genealogy software.[2] GEDCOM is an acronym standing for Genealogical Data Communication. GEDCOM was developed by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) as an aid to genealogical research.[3] Most genealogy software supports importing from and exporting to GEDCOM format.[4]

I don't know if it is just me but to have a "de facto" file specification that was designed by a religious group as being problematic. While I am "not of faith" (Atheist), I applaud the adoption of a standard by which information can be shared between systems, I am not sure what it has to do with organised religion.

In addition, it is the way that the GEDCOM system is adopted by the Geneological Software community without question and that many of the processes are automatic and there seems to be no concern about its regulation. To the average user that is primarily interested in researching their family history they are unaware of what is going on behind the scenes.

Wikitree

Although I have criticised geneological websites, Wikitree is possibly an exception.

Looking back on some of my pages with respect to the de Beauchamp and Longspeee families I find that there is actually a series of discussions from its users on how they performed their research.

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