Ancestry.com has agreed to acquire Archives.com, a family history website, for $100m in cash and assumed liabilities.
This transaction, Ancestry.com says, will enable it to add a differentiated service targeted to a complementary segment of the family history category, which remains a dynamic and growing online category.
As per the deal, Ancestry.com will add key employees of Archives.com, owned by a Silicon Valley-based technology firm Inflection, and also gain access to the company’s technology platform.
Archives.com, commissioned in January 2010, has more than 380,000 paying subscribers to access to over 2.1 billion historical records, including birth records, obituaries, immigration and passenger lists, historical newspapers, and US and UK censuses.
Ancestry.com president and chief executive officer Tim Sullivan said Archives.com has built a business that the company thinks is highly complementary to Ancestry.com’s online family history offering.
"We love their focus on making family history simple and affordable, and we are excited to help the talented Archives.com team continue to grow alongside Ancestry.com, Fold3.com, and Family Tree Maker," added Tim.
Over the past two years, Archives.com has worked with various family history organizations to build out its collection of family history records, with the recent being with the US National Archives to provide free digital access to the recently released 1940 US Federal Census.
Ancestry.com said it will operate Archives.com as a separate company retaining the brand and website after the transaction is closed.
