| Company type | Privately held company |
|---|---|
| Industry | Online services Genealogy Online publishing Software publishing |
| Founded | 1983 |
| Headquarters | Provo,Utah,US |
Key people | Tim Sullivan, President/CEO[1] |
| Products | Ancestry.com Archives.com Family Tree Maker software Fold3.com Genealogy.com MyFamily.com Newspapers.com Rootsweb.com |
| Revenue | US $399.7 million (2011) |
| Owner | Permira and co-investors |
Number of employees | Over 1,000 worldwide (2012) |
| Website | International: corporate.ancestry.com Europe: ancestryeurope.lu |
Ancestry.com Inc. (formerlyThe Generations Network) is aprivate held Internet company. It is based inProvo, Utah, United States. It is the largestfor-profitgenealogy company in the world. The company operates a network of genealogical and historical record websites.[2] These websites are focused on the United States and nineforeign countries. The company also develops andmarkets genealogical software, as well as other genealogical related services. As of December 2013, the company providedapproximately 12.7billion records and had 2.14million payingsubscribers. The website includes 191 million uploaded photos and more than 16 million uploaded stories. These were provided by people who use their website.[3]
The company operates other websites including Archives.com, Fold3.com, ProGenealogists, 1000memories.com, Newspapers.com, Genealogy.com, MyFamily.com, and Rootsweb.com.[4]Family Tree Maker was created by the company thatadvertised it as "the #1 selling family history software". Ancestry.com operates foreign sites that provide access to services and records specific to other countries in the languages of those countries. These include several countries in Europe (covered by Ancestry.com Europe S.à r.l.[5]) as well as Australia, Canada, and China.
On January 1, 1997, Infobases' parent company, Western Standard Publishing, purchased Ancestry, Inc.[6] The website was a publisher ofAncestry magazine andgenealogy books. The website was founded in 1983 by John Sittner. Originally, the website was a newsletter about genealogy. TheAncestry magazine had been launched in January 1994. Western Standard Publishing's CEO was Joe Cannon. He was the main owners of Geneva Steel.[7] In July 1997, Allen and Taggart purchased Western Standard's interest in Ancestry, Inc. That same month, Ancestry, Inc., purchased Bookcraft, Inc., a publisher of books written by leaders and officers of theLDS Church.[8][9] By this time, Allen and Taggart began operating Ancestry, Inc. independently.[10]
The MyFamily.com website launched in December 1998. More free sites opened up in March 1999.[11] MyFamily.com, had one million registered users within its first 140 days.[10] The company raised more than$90 million inventure capital from investors.[10] On November 17, 1999, the name of the company changed from Ancestry.com, Inc. to MyFamily.com, Inc. Its three Internet genealogy sites were then called Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, and FamilyHistory.com.[12] Sales for 2002 were about $62 million, and those for 2003 were $99 million.[13] The company opened acall center inProvo, Utah, in March 2004.[14] On December 19, 2006, the company changed its name to "The Generations Network".[15] The company allowed free access to Ancestry.com at LDS Family History Centers. This service was removed on March 17, 2007. This was because of the lack of amutual agreement. In 2010, Ancestryrestored its access to its site at Family History Centers.
On July 6, 2009, the company changed its name back to Ancestry.com.[16] A year later, Ancestry sold its book publishingassets to Turner Publishing.[17] That same year,Ancestry magazine was no longer publishing after 25 years.[18] On November 5, 2009, Ancestry.com became a publiclytraded company onNASDAQ (symbol: ACOM).[19][20] It's first public offering was at 7.4 millionshares priced at $13.50 per share. The company had a partnership withNBC for a television series calledWho Do You Think You Are?.[21]
In 2010, Ancestry.com expanded its location toSan Francisco, California. The San Francisco office focuses on the technologyaspects of the company. Their recent works include aniPhone andiPadapp. In December 2011, Ancestry.com removed theSocial Security Death Index for people who died within 10 years.[22] These records were removed because ofidentity theft concerns. In September 2012, Ancestry.com expanded its international operations with the opening of its European headquarters inDublin, Ireland. The Dublin office includes a new call center for international customers, as well as product, marketing and engineering teams.[23][24]
In October 2012, Ancestry.com agreed to beacquired by a privateequity group consisting of Permira Advisers LLP, members of Ancestry.com's management team, including CEO Tim Sullivan andCFO Howard Hochhauser, and Spectrum Equity for $32 per share or around $1.6 billion.[25][26] At the same time, Ancestry.com purchased a photo digitization and sharing service called 1000Memories.[27] In September 2013, Ancestry.com announced its acquisition ofFind a Grave.[28] A month later, the company announced it had purchased the family history records ofSouth African genealogy website Ancestry24 which stopped operating in February 2013.[29][30]
Ancestry.com is asubscription-based genealogy research website. It has 5 billion records online.[31] Most of the records are from the United States. However, records are being added for other countries, such as Canada, the UK, and European countries. Some records are free for anyone to access. Most records on Ancestry.com are only available for paying subscribers. Family Tree Maker (FTM) is advertised as "the #1 selling family history software".[32] FTM allows the researcher to keep track of information collected during research and to create reports, charts, and books containing that information.
On June 22, 2006, Ancestry.com completed theindexing andscanning of all of theUnited States Federal Censusrecords from 1790 through 1930.[33][34] The website was nominated for a 2007CODiE Award in the "Best Online Consumer Information Service" category.[35] The website offers a genealogicalDNA tests ofautosomal DNA,paternalY-chromosome DNA andmaternalmitochondrial DNA.[36] In June 2014, Ancestry.com no longer sold the Y-chromosome and mitochondrial DNA testing.[37]
In the first quarter of 2012, Ancestry had 1.87 million users.[38] According to Quantcast, as of April 2012, Ancestry.com reached a rough estimate of 8.3 – 8.4 million people in the US.[39]In the second quarter of 2014, Ancestry had 2.11 million users, for a loss of 52,000 subscribers when compared to the first quarter of 2014.[40]
This is a list of all websites Ancestry.com., Inc. owns.
Ancestry.com's Dublin employees will include staff working within management and finance functions, as well as website developers and member service agents.
It set up in Ireland last year but in July confirmed it would open its European headquarters on Sir John Rogerson's Quay in Dublin, and started taking on around 35 staff from September.