The following was an important announcement by Ancestory.com made on 30 Sep 2013:
We are pleased to announce that Ancestry.com LLC has acquired Find A Grave, Inc., the leading online cemetery database.
With over 100 million memorials and 75 million photos, Find A Grave has amassed an unparalleled collection of burial information. Over the past 18 years, it has grown to become an invaluable resource for genealogists, history buffs and cemetery preservationists. Find A Grave will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Ancestry.com, and will continue to be managed by its founder, Jim Tipton.
Ancestry.com plans to bolster the resources dedicated to Find A Grave to launch a new mobile app, improve customer support, introduce an enhanced edit system for submitting updates to memorials, foreign-language support, and other site improvements.
Quotes:
Tim Sullivan, CEO of Ancestry.com: “Find A Grave is an amazing phenomenon supported by a passionate and engaged community of volunteers around the world. We at Ancestry.com are so excited…honored really…to take on the responsibility of supporting this community. We will maintain Find A Grave as a free website, will retain its existing policies and mode of operation, and look forward to working with Jim Tipton and the entire Find A Grave team to accelerate the development of tools designed to make it even easier for the Find A Grave community to fulfill its original mission to capture every tombstone on Earth.”
Jim Tipton, founder of Find A Grave: “Ancestry.com has been a long-time supporter of Find A Grave. They have been linking and driving traffic to the site for several years. Burial information is a wonderful source for people researching their family history and I look forward to working with Ancestry.com to help continue our growth and accelerate the pace of improvements.”
The terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
We’ll see where this development leads us. From where I sit, it looks like a favorable development for users, with the promise of a mobile app version and other site improvements. Hopefully, Ancestry.com can maintain the good relations with the thousands of volunteers who have populated this online database with very useful information for family historians.
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