If you've seen my other posts, I am not, in general, a fan of Ancestry.com . It's complicated. But recently I submitted DNA to Ancestry and currently am thrilled with some of its features.
| Like | Don't Like | Same as other matching services |
|---|---|---|
| Lots of potential matches | Specific chromosome information hidden | Many matches don't respond to queries |
| 5 generation trees (for those who have created them) List of surnames through 10 generations | Difficult to export match information for analysis or tracking in third party software | |
| Common Ancestors (if you have submitted a tree, may show relationship between you and match, possibly passing through several other trees) | Lots of hooks to get me to subscribe to their (I think) expensive records service | |
| Many shareable family trees | Must be a subscriber to easily view trees, pictures, documents, etc. | |
| Easy to set me up to manage DNA kits submitted by others |
I do recognize that the items I "Don't Like" are features that make sense from Ancestry's point of view, usually protecting privacy of members' data, and allowing Ancestry to build a "gated community" that requires paid access, and to generate the revenue they need for their enormous infrastructure and stores of genealogy records. As a long time genealogy researcher who has seen the disappearance of public, collaborative research, I can still "Don't Like" them.
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