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Ancestry.com Blunder Becomes PR Nightmare Posted: 01 September 2007 By: Rick Roberts, Biography & Archived Articles The article that appears immediately below, originally appeared in Legacy News (30 August 2007 issue). Immediately following is a response from Ancestry.com that appeared in Ancestry's 24-7 Family History Circle blog (31 August 2007) Ancestry.com - "You're Not Going to Believe This" Ancestry.com - Love 'em or hate 'em? After what Ancestry.com Ancestry does provide a wonderful service. Although a bit pricey for many, I'm sure they put millions and millions of dollars into their efforts. We should not expect something for nothing. This week, however, Ancestry went too far. The genealogy community, represented by a variety of bloggers, fought back. Ancestry "listened" and removed (for now) their new Internet Biographical Collection database. Basically, Ancestry cached the pages from other's websites and called the pages their own by requiring a subscription to access them. Imagine Becky Wiseman's surprise when she received an email from someone asking for more information they found on Becky's website at Ancestry.com. Becky does not have a website at Ancestry.com, and she knew that what they were talking about was not her free pages at Rootsweb. Becky researched the issue and learned that Ancestry had copied her personal website and made it available, for a fee, at Ancestry. This didn't happen to just a few websites. Ancestry started listening, and soon made their new Internet Biographical Collection database free, after giving them a valid email address. Yesterday Ancestry issued a statement suggesting that they were trying to help the genealogy community by archiving websites. They have now pulled the database. I'm now more motivated to increase my efforts with the FamilySearchIndexing project. Here's what others are saying:
Ancestry's response to this week's PR nightmare The following statement was issued today by Kendall Hulet, a product manager at Ancestry.com,
I wanted to write you a note because I’m extremely concerned about the frustrations that the recently-removed Internet Biographical Collection has caused. We had hoped to provide a way for you to be able to search the entire web easily for genealogically-relevant pages and provide for preservation of sources for future generations. In looking back, we understand why members of the community are upset. We’ve heard you loud and clear, and we’ve removed this product with no intention of re-releasing it. Instead, it is my hope that someday we’ll be able to provide a free web search engine that links directly back to the live web pages, and can become a useful tool to the genealogical community. If we do move forward with this type of initiative, we will seek your input and talk more with community leaders to make sure we get it right. Shopping Cart & Order Desk Global Genealogy & History Shoppe 1-800-361-5168 ( 9-5 Tuesday to Saturday )
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