Ancestry.com takeover of Archives.com Problem
The problem as I see it is that most of us involved in genealogical
research do it because of personal interest such as finding our own
origins, or for religious reasons. Nobody involved in genealogical
research is motivated by financial profit.
Prior to the Internet, there were thousands of people researching
their family history, but they did not know about each other. This is
painstaking and time consuming work. Then they recorded their results
in family bibles or other such places. When they died, all of their
data and information was lost.
Now, with the Internet we can suddenly find each other and merge our
findings together.
For example, when I started this I only knew the names of three of my
grandparents. I did not know the names of any of my great-
grandparents.
Now, I know the names and dates of 30,000 blood relatives. I have some
branches of my family tree going back to the year 1500. All these
findings were made possible by the Internet.
I have contributed all this data free of charge to several Internet
genealogical websites. One reason I do this is I am hoping that others
will use my data and expand on it, finding new links that I have not
been able to find. I am constantly finding long lost or newly
discovered relatives through this method.
Now, I am discovering that Ancestry.com has bought up and purchased
several of the websites to which I have contributed my data. They have
closed down some of these websites. On others, they are selling for
profit the information I gave them free of charge.
Ancestry dot com is a purely business enterprise, motivated by
financial profit. It is a publicly traded Internet company
(NASDAQ: ACOM) based in Provo, Utah, USA. They are only in it for the
money and have been ruthless in buying and then shutting down free
websites in order to maximize their financial profit.
For example, they shut down the Social Security Death Index. They say
that they did this because of privacy concerns and because of identity
theft by criminals. However, these claims are obviously bogus, because
they have made the Social Security Death Index available on a monthly
subscription fee basis. Obviously, criminals will pay the fees to get
the information. It is us, the general public, who have only an
occasional need for this information who now cannot get it.
Typically of
ancestry.com operations, the Social Security Death Index
contains information obtained free of charge from the US Government.
They get the data for free and then will sell it to us for profit. I
suggest that there is something wrong with this and Ancestry dot com
should be stopped from gobbling up any more Internet websites.
Sam Sloan