--- title: "Ancestry.com" chunk: 3/3 source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancestry.com" category: "reference" tags: "science, encyclopedia" date_saved: "2026-05-05T14:17:34.067164+00:00" instance: "kb-cron" --- === Fold3 === Fold3 is a premium portal that specializes in military genealogy. Subscribers access an online database with military records, including stories, photos, and personal documents. It was rebranded as Forces War Records in the British & Commonwealth nations in April 2023. The website also features the Guion Miller Roll, an Eastern Cherokee tribal roll. === Footnote === Ancestry.com acquired iArchives, Inc., and its service footnote.com, in 2010. The purchase brought in assets including processes for digitizing microfilm. Footnote was rebranded Fold3 in 2011. === Geneanet === On August 31, 2021, Ancestry.com announced its acquisition of Geneanet. Geneanet explains that the acquisition by Ancestry is the consequence of the failure of the Filae negotiations with the birth of a formidable competitor. The Geneanet.org site, which must remain autonomous, indicates that it will give access to many databases indexed by Ancestry within the framework of Premium subscriptions. === Archives.com === Archives.com was bought by Ancestry for $100 million in 2012. Archives.com is a genealogy website specializing in census and vital records. As of November 29, 2023, Archives.com claimed 11.8 billion photos, newspapers, census, and vital records in its collections. === Newspapers.com === In 2012, Ancestry spun off its digitized online newspaper components into a standalone service, Newspapers.com. By 2024, the site had more than 25,000 newspapers able to be searched, including some from ten different countries. The website's principal competitor is NewspaperArchive, which claims it has online newspapers dating from 1607 worldwide, and its index in March 2024 included more than 16,000 newspapers. Both websites have similar models for increasing their databases: striking deals with libraries, publishers and historical organizations to scan the publications for free to include in their database. Some participants see the process of free scanning as an easier, cheaper and quicker way to get their publications online than working through the U.S. government-operated National Digital Newspaper Program. === RootsWeb === RootsWeb, acquired by Ancestry in June 2000, is a free genealogy community that uses online forums, mailing lists, and other resources to help people research their family history. Users can upload GEDCOM files of their information for others to search at the WorldConnect portion of the site. Trees uploaded to WorldConnect are searchable at both the RootsWeb and Ancestry Web sites. On December 20, 2017, a file containing 300,000 RootsWeb user names, passwords, and email addresses was exposed to the Internet. The 300,000 records were from RootsWeb surname list service; 55,000 of those records were also Ancestry.com login credentials. By 2024, the hosted Web sites were all read-only, disabling all user logins. === We Remember === We Remember is a free online memorial platform, which was launched by Ancestry in November 2017. It allows users to create a space to preserve and share photos and videos about the deceased. === Forces War Records === Forces War Records was a low cost provider of transcribed genealogical data from British sources. Much of the content behind their paywall had simply been taken from public domain sources. As a consequence, there was a lack of transparency as to where they sourced their content from. (See Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 315#RfC: forces-war-records.co.uk) They came under criticism for difficulties in canceling subscriptions, with a complaint about their misleading marketing being upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority. Acquired by Ancestry on May 24, 2021, the press release announced that 'Forces War Records is a British military genealogy-specialist website with a unique product that helps people both discover and contextualize their family's military history.' Given that Fold3 had a negative perception as "US-centric", the same dataset offerings and web architecture were used in the UK, albeit branded as Forces War Records, from April 2023 onwards. The provision of service records for the first time ever, via this brand, as a consequence of the linkage with fold3, has reinvigorated the brand. Not only transcriptions, but also images of source documents are now available to the subscriber. In support of the brand being relaunched as a premium portal that specializes in military genealogy, half a million records were added to the (FWR/Fold3) portal in July 2023. === Past products === Family Origins Family Tree Maker was purchased by Software MacKiev in 2016. Genealogy.com, which maintains a genealogy research website, was acquired by MyFamily.com in 2003. Generations Family Tree (originally called "Reunion for Windows") MyFamily.com allowed members to create private family, or group, websites. In May 2010, MyFamily closed its Bellevue, Washington, development office, effectively letting its entire staff go since none of the staff accepted an offer to move to Provo. Ancestry shut down MyFamily.com on September 5, 2014. At the time of the shutdown, MyFamily had not resolved discontent with the downloading process, which consisted of capturing miscellaneous uncatalogued photos, with alphanumeric names and no data attached, and various calendar documents, thus leaving behind the associated data, File Cabinet documents, family recipes, and all other information. ROOTS software series by CommSoft was one of the first publishers of series of genealogy software programs, created in the 1980s, and available until 1997. Commsoft released the following: ROOTS89 for the Heath H-8 series of personal computers; ROOTS/M for the CP/M operating system; and ROOTS II for MS-DOS, followed by ROOTS III and ROOTS IV; and ROOTS V for Windows along with Visual ROOTS for Microsoft Windows. Ultimate Family Tree (UFT) == See also == 23andMe Genographic Project iArchives, Inc. MyHeritage FamilyTreeDNA == References == == Further reading == de Groot, Jerome (2020). "Ancestry.com and the Evolving Nature of Historical Information Companies". The Public Historian. 42 (1): 8–28. doi:10.1525/tph.2020.42.1.8. S2CID 166746075. == External links == Official website Ancestry Corporate Website | https://www.ancestry.com/corporate