Well if you were using Family Tree Maker (FTM) software and you used it to interface (tree sync) with your Ancestry tree(s), this announcement will not make you a happy camper. Got it yesterday in e-mail and confirmed it on their Ancestry blog. Also thank you Karen Howard, one of my genealogy students, for also passing along the heads up on this.
Dear Family Tree Maker™ community,
Ancestry is proud to have made a significant investment this year to bring valuable new content and records to the Ancestry site. In 2015, we’ve made 220 million searchable historical records from Mexico available, more than 170 million pages from the largest collection of U.S. will and probate records, among others. We’ve also introduced new features such as Ancestry Academy, and major advancements for AncestryDNA.
As we strive to provide our customers with the best experience possible, we are constantly evaluating our services and product offerings. True to this focus, we’ve taken a hard look at the declining desktop software market and the impact this has on being able to continue to provide new content, product enhancements and support that our users need. With that, we’ve made the tough decision to stop selling Family Tree Maker as of December 31, 2015.
We will continue to support existing Family Tree Maker owners at least through January 1, 2017. During this time, all features of the software, including TreeSync™ will continue to work. Our Member Services team will also remain available to assist with questions or issues you may have.
These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on continuing to build great products for our loyal Ancestry community.
You can find additional details about the retirement of Family Tree Maker on our blog.
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So this is more fallout by the implementation of their new Ancestry website next week. This company continues to amaze me how they manage to tick off their members on a regular basis.
Not sure who is advising Tim Sullivan Ancestry CEO in these matters, but I guess when you are the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room, you will do what you want subscribers be damned.
My guess is this represents the Internet cloud mentality that permeates the net these days. Also this looks like more a marketing ploy to keep you as a subscriber rather than doing good genealogy. I can't imagine doing genealogy in a net/tree only environment.
If you are using FTM software I highly recommend making the move to Legacy genealogy software.
Geoff Rasmussen at Legacy is smiling all the way to the bank.
