It is a long time since I did much of my own family history research but I now find myself teaching a beginners course in family history to my local University of the Third Age in Sussex, a mutual-help organisation for those no longer in full time work. My own experience was largely with Ancestry and Find My Past and some judicious use of the IGI. I am impressed by the great expansion of paid-for online sources on Ancestry and FMP since I last looked but the most surprising development to me is the enormous expansion of the free records available on the Church of the Latter-Day Saints site Family Search. Through partnerships with FMP and Ancestry and others there is now a great deal more census transcript material freely available than there used to be (no longer is there just the 1881 UK census transcription) and there has been an enormous increase in other sources. Allegedly the number of names now searchable has risen from 700 million in 2012 to over 5 billion worldwide and the number of record collections available free has almost doubled. And the search engine hitched to these records seems to be very smart in many ways - estimating birth dates from marriage records etc - and highly capable. It is possible for instance to search a place of birth by given name only or surname only to find elusive records where perhaps the spelling is odd or mistranscribed. Wild card * is allowed at the beginning and middle of a surname. And the LDS Church seems bent on increasing the records available free online with nearly 300 teams worldwide digitising more sources and the promise of automated indexing software to convert old microfilm sources to computer searchable ones. FS has changed the landscape of free online resources as it clearly aims to do. With longstanding subscriptions to Ancestry and FMP I had rather neglected it in recent years. You are also invited to create an account on the website - in effect to join something - whereupon you are allowed to store (“preserve” is the word used) and share your family tree and those of others with such accounts (as you are on Ancestry and FMP). My question is whether anyone else has experience of this new generation Family Search and any thoughts about any of this? Has anyone found a good analysis of how to make the FS search engine work most efficiently for them? Are there any concerns about the ownership of family tree material submitted to FS (and indeed Ancestry and FMP)?