The release of FamilyTreeMaker 2005 has generated a lot of messages on the FamilyTreeMaker message board.
http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=board&r=rw&p=t...One of the changes that generated comment about the new release is the fact that the web search feature has been changed so that it searches Ancestry.com databases instead of Genealogy.com databases. Some people with a Genealogy.com subscription were upset that this change was not made clear in the new release newsletter. This then led to a discussion of the merits of Ancestry versus Genealogy and brought up some issues I was not aware of. Since the purpose of the FamilyTreeMaker message board is to deal with questions about the program and how to use it, a suggestion was made that this message board would be a better place to discuss the Ancestry-Genealogy issues.
I had been under the impression that FamilyTreeMaker and Genealogy.com were sister companies with no connection to Ancestry.com. In fact, I thought Genealogy and Ancestry were competitors for our subscription dollars.
If you go to Genealogy.com and click the “about us†tab at the bottom of the screen, you learn that Genealogy.com is part of the MyFamily.com, Inc. network of sites and that Genealogy.com continues to be a leader in the genealogy technology space, producing the #1 selling family tree software — Family Tree Maker.
If you go to Ancestry.com and click the “about us†you learn that:
Corporate Background
MyFamily.com, Inc.
MyFamily.com, Inc. is the leading online subscription business and the leading network for connecting families.
They support the following sites.
RootsWeb.com
MyFamily.com
Ancestry.com
Ancestry.co.uk
Notice the omissions in each of these “about us†lists. Genealogy does not tell us Ancestry is part of the same corporate family. Ancestry does not tell us Genealogy and FamilyTreeMaker are part of the same corporate family. Only because both tell us they are part of the MyFamily.com organization can we learn this.
Both Genealogy and Ancestry charge ever higher prices for their subscription services. If we subscribe to both we are paying for a lot of duplication. There are also some things that are unique to each service so that they can claim to offer value that can not be found elsewhere.
To me, this looks like a scheme to get us to pay twice for services with a lot of overlap. If Genealogy and Ancestry were truly independent of each other, at least the competition would drive them to offer new and improved services and help control subscription fees. As it is, the corporate family makes money no matter which service we subscribe to. If we subscribe to both, they really make out.
Given the existing corporate structure, we would be better off if they combined their databases and had one set of tiered subscription fees. At least we would not pay twice for the same thing. And we would not be conned into thinking we were dealing with true competitors.
Curtis Miller