Gwen- This is is personally upsetting for me and for others. We have just gone through a rather lengthy discussion of copyright protection and since Rootsweb has ALWAYS protected the information submitted to it's sites, and myFamily does not (once you upload your trees, they show up on a CRdom in a short time-I've found my own unsubmitted information with the errors I know I had in them and they were on a rom that I bought from them) This makes me think that nothing is sacred. I hope Joyce checks this out for all of the work that has gone into her fantastic site. I'd hate to see all of that work destroyed by commercialism. Hopefully, I'm all wet. Please reassure me that this will not be the case! A VERY CONCERNED Peggie in OR -----Original Message----- From: Gwen Mecum Hunt [mailto:airlaunch@thegrid.net] Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2000 7:15 AM To: PABRADFO-L@rootsweb.com Subject: [PABRADFO] Rootsweb/MyFamily.Com merger Press Release PRESS RELEASE: MyFamily.com, Inc. Acquires Number Two Genealogy Site, RootsWeb.com MyFamily.com, Inc. Increases Portfolio of Sites to Extend Its Position as the Number One Online Source for Families and Family History Research San Francisco, CA – June 21, 2000 – MyFamily.com, Inc., the leading online family network, announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire RootsWeb.com, the oldest and largest free community genealogy site. RootsWeb.com, a San Francisco, California company, is among the most popular genealogy sites on the Internet. With more than 149 million page views in the month of May 2000, RootsWeb.com was second among genealogy Web sites only to Ancestry.com's over 187 million page views, according to Nielsen NetRatings combined home and work statistics. With the acquisition MyFamily.com, Inc. will add RootsWeb.com to its portfolio of Web sites, which includes MyFamily.com, FamilyHistory.com, as well as Ancestry.com, collectively recognized as the premier Internet destination for families. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Following the acquisition, the RootsWeb.com site will continue to be free to all users and will maintain its own unique Web site address, www.RootsWeb.com. The acquisition by MyFamily.com, Inc. will provide the RootsWeb.com site the financial backing to expand its focus on preserving, sharing, and exchanging family history research. As part of the MyFamily.com network of sites, the RootsWeb.com site will expand with additional technology tools, increased family research content and a greater range of genealogical resources. With genealogy as one of the most popular hobbies online, the addition of RootsWeb.com extends MyFamily.com's offerings in genealogy research and further enhances its leading position in genealogy research and family services on the Internet. This new combination creates a central destination for the genealogy community online, offering something for every family historian. This move comes at a time when a recent Pew Internet and American Life Study reported that 54 million people belong to a family in which someone used the Internet to research their family history or genealogy. "This is truly a winning combination for both organizations and for the millions of users who make up our audiences," said Greg Ballard, CEO of MyFamily.com. "We believe that we are in an excellent position to expand our offering to consumers through a number of acquisitions like this one. There is no question that consumers are using the Internet to connect to their families, and we plan to put in place an aggressive program that will enable us to have the most complete network for families online." Strategically, the acquisition of RootsWeb.com will provide MyFamily.com with an increase in advertising real estate and an expanded audience reach, and will provide increased transaction and commerce opportunities. In addition, it will increase exposure to Ancestry.com's free and premium subscription offerings. Currently more than 600 million records and 2,500 databases are online at Ancestry.com, with over half of the data freely accessible to all Web users. MyFamily.com, Inc. generates revenues from diversified streams, including advertising/sponsorships, subscriptions and commerce among its network of sites. "RootsWeb.com fits well with the MyFamily.com vision of creating the largest and most active online resource for families and family history research," said Dr. Brian Leverich, founder of RootsWeb.com. "This agreement will expand both the number of RootsWeb.com users and content contributors. At the same time, we have ensured that RootsWeb.com content, services, mailing lists and Web pages will remain free, while allowing the site to provide more functionality and resources to a larger audience as a result of our being part of the MyFamily.com network." As part of its ongoing commitment to the genealogical community, MyFamily.com, Inc. will continue to support volunteer, non-profit organizations such as The USGenWeb Project (www.USGenWeb.org), Immigrant Ships Transcribers Guild (ISTG.rootsweb.com), The Free Births, Marriages, and Deaths Project (FreeBMD.rootsweb.com), and other groups that provide free genealogical content. RootsWeb.com is a valuable source for genealogy, with interactive guides and numerous tools for tracing one's ancestry; it hosts more than 17,000 independently authored Web sites and approximately 19,000 mailing lists and 153,000 message boards. GWEN MECUM HUNT airlaunch@thegrid.net Templeton, CA Searching every nook and cranny for ancestors: Tri-Counties area: BAKER, BRINK, FORBES, FRENCH, GROVER, HAYDEN, HORTON, JONES, KNOWLES, LLOYD, MANNING, MECUM, MYERS, SMITH, SKINNER, SWARTOUT, WILLIAMS, WILSON et al... Proud to be a Rootsweb Sponsor! Check out my Rootsweb WorldConnect website: http://worldconnect.genealogy.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=mecum1