Internet Biographical Collection Removed from Ancestry.com!

Post by **Ina** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:53 am

The following announcement was posted a few minutes ago on the Ancestry.com web site:

Earlier this week we launched the Internet Biographical Collection on Ancestry.com. Our goal was to offer members a search engine that focused primarily on genealogy resources. We intended this collection to help surface family history information that many people would not be able to find easily because it is often scattered among numerous websites across the Internet. We cached individual Web pages in an effort to preserve history - if a Web page featuring important family history information were taken down in the future, a cached version would still be available.

Many people have expressed concerns about the collection and the search engine we created on Ancestry.com. We recognize the significant time and resources members of the genealogical community invest to make their family history research available online.

Over the past few days we have reevaluated this collection's goals, caching and crawling ability, and user experience. We have decided to remove this collection and search engine from Ancestry.com for the time being. We are still dedicated to providing family historians the online tools and aggregated records that make it easier to trace their family tree and will work to develop a solution that meets those needs in a way that will be most beneficial to our customers and the community.

This Biographical Collection certainly was short lived.

Ina

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:52 am

Hello Ina,

It would be interesting to read the full story behind that withdrawal if it ever comes out. I had never heard of the Internet Biographical Collection until your post.

It seems hard to believe something that happened so quickly was a result of complaints from ordinary folk.

Sounds more like a panic move following complaint from a particularly influential group, organisation, individual or whatever or maybe there was just a breakdown in the system somewhere and they're covering it up.

Alan

Post by **Ina** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 5:57 am

Hi Alan,

Eastman just made the same post in his newletter as the one above from me. I'm sure he will find out the whole story and publish it in his daily newletter.

Ina

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 6:41 am

Thanks Ina,

Yes, Eastman's is a very interesting site. I visited there quite some time back, forgot to bookmark, and lost track of the name of the site. I've fixed that now thanks to you.

In case anyone doesn't know what we're talking about it's here.
http://blog.eogn.com/

Alan

theKiwi · Post by **theKiwi** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 11:50 am

There are quite a few sites with postings about this - but Eastmans is the one I've viewed the most and other sites are linked there.

This had the possibility to be something quite good, but in my opinion they went about it the wrong way. As initially released:

It took people's sites and created a cache of them which were put behind the Ancestry PayWall - you had to be a subscriber to see the content.

When you did get to see it, it was in an Ancestry frame, so masking just where it came from.

At this time I discovered that one of only two hits on Houliston - one of my problem ancestor surnames - was to my Christmas newsletter of 2000, after my wife and I had been in Scotland and been to the church where we thought (later proven wrong) my Houliston ancestor married. I couldn't see my newsletter since I wasn't an Ancestry subscriber, but from the snippet presented in the search result there was no doubt what it was.

After the initial uproar about Ancestry taking people's sites and charging others to view them, Ancestry made access to the database free a day later, but still kept the primary search result in a frame, however they did provide a link to view the original site.

Less than a day after this change they took the whole thing down, or at least announced their intention to remove it. This morning as I write this the search page is still there, but it won't return any results.

I was fine with them indexing my site, but the things that annoyed me about it were

- initially they were charging people to view my site and not providing an obvious way to get to view it direct
- the results weren't exactly relevant - of all the things they could have found on my site(s) to index about Houliston, including genealogy information about many hundreds of people called Houliston they chose the Christmas newsletter from 2000. There were results to all sorts of pages that were for the most part completely irrelevant to family researchers
- their use of frames to at least initially hide where the page really came from
- if one clicked the button to add this page to your Ancestry tree, it was sourced as coming from Ancestry, not from my site.

Anyhow now it's gone.

Roger

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:42 pm

When you copy something, hide it's true origin, claim it as your own and sell it, isn't that piracy?

Alan

Post by **emanday** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 12:49 pm

Currie wrote:When you copy something, hide it's true origin, claim it as your own and sell it, isn't that piracy?

Alan

Possibly Alan, but in the past we used to call it cheating!

Just a thought

I wonder how many hits the cached pages got while they were pay-to-view, and if Ancestry have any plans to financially reward the owners of same?

Post by **paddyscar** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 2:07 pm

Theft, copyright infringement, dishonest, brazenly stupid ... all seem to fit.

To point the direction to possible sources is one thing, but to actually cache the page and store it? I can not believe that there could have been more than one person in the room when that scheme was launched! Obviously a day when all grey matter was left at home when they went to the office.

This flies in the face of the most fundamental of life's rules that we all learned at our Mothers' knees - don't take something that doesn't belong to you. Compound that, with presenting it as your own, is a lawyer's dream come true.

There is no excuse for this ever to have occurred, especially in a company of the size, scope and experience of Ancestry.com

Frances

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Fri Aug 31, 2007 3:18 pm

paddyscar wrote:...snipped............To point the direction to possible sources is one thing, but to actually cache the page and store it? I can not believe that there could have been more than one person in the room when that scheme was launched! Obviously a day when all grey matter was left at home when they went to the office.

.....snipped...........Frances

Aye, weel, but it needs to be understood that Ancestry is now owned by venture capitalists, whose aim, as always in such situations, is to maximise their return; and I can well imagine that this was seen as a "good wheeze" to assist with that objective.

Fortunately, sanity prevailed after a surprisingly short period

David