>Why is it that every search that I make goes to ancestry.com? I >even try the old free websites and they are now "governed" by >ancestry.com. They have become a monopoly. What happened to >freedom of search on the Internet? Is anyone else having this >problem? Pat Hite > Please, let's try to keep discussion on NCROOTS restricted to North Carolina genealogy. To forestall further debate about this issue, I'll just make a short administrative statement: Several years ago Ancestry.com bought out RootsWeb, which was originally a cooperative genealogy project, and which hosts NCROOTS and many other lists, the WorldConnect project, and many of the national and county pages of the USGenWeb project. All these are freely available, as are the message boards at RootsWeb/Ancestry for counties and surnames. Ancestry.com also provides many additional databases and records as a subscription-only service. Some people find these to be a valuable resource, others would prefer not to pay for access. There are of course many other projects and personal web pages on the internet that having nothing to do with Ancestry.com. -- Elizabeth Harris ncgen@mindspring.com NCGenWeb project: http://www.rootsweb.com/~ncgenweb/ Winston-Salem NC area genealogy: http://www.fmoran.com/