If Ancestry.com owns myfamily,genealogy and rootsweb.com?

Question:Is there any real difference between these sites. Or is this just another case of a company tring to make more money? Has Ancestry.com just bought other sites that just have a different format? Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: Is there any real difference between these sites. Or is this just another case of a company tring to make more money? Has Ancestry.com just bought other sites that just have a different format? Thank you for sharing your experiences.

I believe all the sites were independently founded, but over the years they have merged with "The Generations Network" as the parent company. Nothing nefarious; just good business to buy up the competition.

Ancestry.Com has a lot more records. I feel it is the best online for records. Your public library might have a subscription to Ancestry.Com you can utilize.

Don't pick a website just for the family trees.
Information in family trees on any website, free or paid, must be taken as clues not as fact. Most is not documented. Even when you see the same information repeatedly by many different subscribers that doesn't mean it is correct. People are copying without verifying. Use the information as clues as to where to get the documentation.

Most websites are supplied by users. They donate their info and get nothing in return. No freebies.

Ancestry does have a large amount of other records that have be acquired by whatever means and yes we have to pay for them.

Some people upload their stuff to one website but not to others. My policy is not to give them my work. I share with others with the understanding that it is not posted. I don't want any company making money on my work and then charge me to look at it. Oh don't get me started on this one.

I still like the old fashion way of looking for my family tree. One document at a time in dusty old courthouses. To me that's all the fun of this. It gives you a feel for what your ancestors went thru back in their time.

A lot a folks think their is some magic website out there that you put your name into and out pops your family. I wish it was that easy. Think of all the trips I could save myself and all the handiwipes for my hands. Heck I would have been done with my family years ago.

But until that happens I'll stick to the old fashion way. Works for me and I have a ball doing it.

Historically, yes.

RootsWeb used to be independent, supported by the users, like PBS and NPR. (I sent them $24 a year.) That didn't pan out. Ancestry took it over. They pledged that it would remain free; data on it would be free to anyone. Lots and lots of US Gen Web sites are on RW; so is an SSDI, the California Death Index and some other major data bases. RW World Connect is the largest single data base I can recall; it is free.

I've noticed the distinction between the sites has been fading.

I have used ancestry for a lot of my on line work, I have always been happy with there service although learnt early on not to trust there transcriptions and view scanned copy's of the originals. I have also used (and still do) use rootsweb but this site has changed since it was taken over by ancestry and feels like a "poor relation" since it was taken over.

I like to use www.lostcousins.com which attempts to link researchers by use of the 1881 census for England and Wales and Canada and the 1880 American federal census, also you can add relative from the 1841 census for England & Wales. This site is free to use.

Ancestry needs a major competitor to balance things out.

I use ancestry.com quite a bit. But the information that is most important to me at this point in my research is a bit more arcane, so it can cost you a bundle.

Like an earlier answer, I too have long since learned to examine the original documents, vice their transcriptions. There are actually a surpringly few errors given the vast amount of information and documents they have indexed, but you do run into them frequently if you do a lot of research. I think experienced genealogists can get a lot more out of this service because they are aware (through tough experience) all of the problems (names variants, misspellings, lousy writing) that can occur in these documents and so really know how to work searches in a more optimum way. And I often just scan visually original document after document, especially census information, because I often find family members (under strange spellings or just missing in the index or improperly indexed) doing this.

But for a person fairly new, it can be overwhelming - what do you do when you get 1,350 hits on your person search? For the standard things a person rather new to genealogy research, a lot of free sites have the basics - SSDI, census, etc. I would really exhaust those sources before sinking often a hundred dollars + to get access to the level of ancestry that brings you well beyond the basic information sources.