Ancestry.com

Online genealogy company based in Utah

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February 1 2025 Howard Hochhauser succeeded Deb Liu as Ancestry's President & CEO, continuing to serve as a Board member while the company initiates a search for a new CFO.
2024 All RootsWeb hosted websites were converted to read-only status, with all user logins disabled.
March 2024 Newspapers.com expanded its database to over 25,000 searchable newspapers from ten different countries, significantly increasing its historical content coverage.
2023 Ancestry.com expanded its genetic testing services to include DNA testing for dogs, offering comparisons to over 400 breed profiles through their 'Know Your Pet DNA' service.
2023 Became the largest provider of consumer DNA testing worldwide, with a network of over 25 million users and DNA testing available in 128 countries.
July 2023 Half a million military records added to the Forces War Records/Fold3 portal, enhancing the platform's service as a premium military genealogy resource with both transcriptions and source document images.
April 2023 Forces War Records begins using the same dataset offerings and web architecture as Fold3, repositioning its service in the UK market.
April 2023 Fold3 rebranded as Forces War Records in British & Commonwealth nations, expanding its military genealogy portal's market presence.
March 2023 Ancestry won a contract to digitize over 3 million British Army service records, planned for release from 2024 through 2029.
November 2021 Ancestry acquired the French Genealogy Company Geneanet.
August 31 2021 Ancestry.com announced its acquisition of Geneanet, a genealogy website, following unsuccessful negotiations between Geneanet and Filae. The acquisition aimed to expand Ancestry's genealogical research capabilities while allowing Geneanet.org to remain autonomous.
May 24 2021 Ancestry acquires Forces War Records, a British military genealogy-specialist website, with the aim of helping people discover and contextualize their family's military history.
February 2021 Ancestry announced Deb Liu, a former Facebook executive, as their new CEO, effective March 1.
December 4 2020 The Blackstone Group acquired Ancestry.com in a deal valued at $4.7 billion, marking a significant milestone in the company's ownership history.
August 2020 The Blackstone Group announced plans to acquire Ancestry for $4.7 billion.
July 2020 Ancestry claimed their DNA database contained 18 million completed customer DNA kits.
2018 The company reported 3 million paying subscribers and had sold 18 million DNA kits to customers.
December 2018 Ancestry.com announced a strict data policy preventing DNA profile use in criminal investigations without a valid legal process, in response to concerns about genetic privacy.
November 2018 Ancestry reported having 10 billion historical records available to users, which would later triple to 30 billion records by an unspecified date.
December 20 2017 A security breach exposed a file containing 300,000 RootsWeb user names, passwords, and email addresses, with 55,000 of these records being Ancestry.com login credentials.
November 2017 Ancestry launched 'We Remember', a free online memorial platform that enables users to create digital spaces for preserving and sharing photos and videos about deceased individuals.
June 2017 Ancestry.com began migrating all applications and data to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
2016 Family Tree Maker software was purchased by Software MacKiev, transferring ownership of the genealogy software product.
April 2016 GIC Private Limited and Silver Lake purchased equity stakes in Ancestry.com, with the company's market value estimated at over $3 billion by 2017.
July 16 2015 Ancestry launched AncestryHealth and appointed Cathy A. Petti as Chief Health Officer. The company also partnered with Calico (Google subsidiary) to research human longevity and heredity.
September 5 2014 Ancestry shut down MyFamily.com, terminating the platform that previously allowed members to create private family and group websites.
June 2014 Ancestry.com discontinued its paternal Y-chromosome DNA and maternal mitochondrial DNA tests.
March 2014 Ancestry.com launched a mobile app to enhance user access to genealogical research tools.
September 30 2013 Ancestry.com acquired Find a Grave, a genealogy website, with site editor Jim Tipton noting the site's value for family history research.
2012 Ancestry spun off its digitized online newspaper components into a standalone service called Newspapers.com, creating a separate platform for historical newspaper archives.
2012 Ancestry acquired Archives.com for $100 million, expanding its genealogy website collections which included 11.8 billion photos, newspapers, census, and vital records.
October 2012 Ancestry.com was acquired by a private equity group for $1.6 billion and simultaneously purchased the photo digitization service 1000Memories.
September 2012 Ancestry.com expanded international operations by opening European headquarters in Dublin, Ireland, which included a new call center and product, marketing, and engineering teams.
March 2012 Ancestry.com acquired DNA assets from GeneTree.
2011 Footnote.com was rebranded as Fold3, following its acquisition by Ancestry.com in the previous year.
2011 Ancestry launched Android and iOS mobile applications.
December 2011 Ancestry.com moved the Social Security Death Index search behind a paywall and stopped displaying Social Security information of recently deceased individuals due to identity theft concerns.
2010 Ancestry.com acquired iArchives, Inc. and its service footnote.com, gaining digital microfilm digitization capabilities and assets.
2010 Ancestry sold its book publishing assets to Turner Publishing Company and expanded domestic operations by opening a new office in San Francisco, California with engineering, product, and marketing teams.
May 2010 MyFamily.com closed its Bellevue, Washington development office, releasing its entire staff after no employees accepted relocation to Provo.

This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia article Ancestry.com, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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