Ancestry Rationalizes Websites
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In a blog post of 4 June 2014, Ancestry announced the following websites would be “retired” (shutdown) effective September 2014:
• MyFamily.com [a social network website for families]
• MyCanvas.com [a website to order family photo books and calendars]
• Mundia.com [a family tree website]
• Genealogy.com [one of the oldest and largest genealogy websites]
In addition, Ancestry will no longer be offering their Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, but will continue to offer their AncestryDNA test.
If you are a subscriber to any of these websites/services, Ancestry will be contacting you directly with details on how to transition any information you may have created on these platforms.
Many people may not be familiar with MyFamily, MyCanvas and Mundia, which is a major reason why Ancestry shut them down. The company has decided instead to focus on their core offering, which is providing ancestral records.
Genealogy.com is a bit different. As discussed in the article Top 100 Genealogy Websites of 2014, Genealogy.com is the ninth largest genealogy website in the world. Ancestry acquired it from A&E Networks in 2003 when A&E decided to get out of the genealogy business. Ancestry never really did much with the website. This is evident by the very dated website interface, as shown below.
Genealogy.com gets an average of 4,600 visitors a day, many probably due to the website address. It is too valuable for Ancestry to just shut down. They will, however, remove all the content and services currently on the website. If we were to hazard a guess, Ancestry will probably dress up the web address and turn it into a portal to access their other offerings on the internet.
