Ancestry.com Inc., which has one of the most popular genealogy websites, Ancestry.com, is buying Archives.com. This purchase will allow Ancestry.com to reach a portion of the genealogy market that the Archives website was able to acquire. Are you using either of these genealogy websites?
Ancestry.com started as a publishing company in 1983. They are now the world’s largest online resource for family history. They have more than 1.8 million paying subscribers worldwide. They have more than 9 billion historical records. There are more than 115 million photographs, scanned documents, and written stories on the website, and there have been 34 million family trees that have been created by members.
Archives.com was launched in 2009, (and was originally called GenealogyArchives.com). It has over 2.1 billion vital and historical records. In September of 2011, they added a collection of the United States Federal Population Census Indexes from 1790 to 1930. The website has 380,000 paying subscribers. Archives.com was owned and operated by a parent company called Inflection.
Ancestry.com Inc., will buy Archives.com for $100 million. It will pay cash for this purchase, and will assume liabilities. Recently, Archives.com and Ancestry.com partnered with the National Archives in order to provide free digital access to the 1940 U.S. Census. Archives.com is going to continue under the leadership of Inflection until the completion of the sale, and until the customary closing conditions are met.
Archives.com has information on its website about the sale. Part of that says:
“Once the acquisition is completed, Ancestry.com will continue to operate and develop Archives.com using the existing Archives.com brand and website. Most of the Archives.com team, including key personnel in leadership, engineering, design, marketing, and business development, will transition to Ancestry.com.”
Ancestry.com also has information in their blog about the purchase of Archives.com. Part of that blog says:
“It means that the acquisition will enable Ancestry.com to add a differentiated service targeted to a complementary segment of the growing family history category. In addition, Ancestry.com will welcome a team of talented engineers, digital marketers, and family history innovators into the Ancestry.com fold and also gain access to a proprietary technology platform that has supported Archives.com’s rapid growth”.
It seems to me that genealogists who use Archives.com are not going to have to worry about it disappearing as a result of the purchase by Ancestry.com. The two will still continue to exist. The immediate difference is that they will both be part of the same company, soon.
Image by 401K on Flickr