I received this message clarifying the misunderstanding regarding viewing family trees and Ancestry.com's subscription service: What is being SOLD is a subscription to an advanced search feature that will match data from the free (still free) family trees and that found in other pay databases and census records at Ancestry and present it to the subscriber in a neatly stitched together package -- taking the work out of the searching and matching. What is being SOLD is CONVENIENCE and not the trees. The trees are still free to submit and free to search and match using the same tools that have always been part of the program. Nothing has changed in that regard.