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Blackstone to acquire Ancestry.com for $4.7 billion
Reuters ^ | March 3, 2023 | Chibuike Oguh

Posted on 03/03/2023 10:21:13 AM PST by Golden Eagle

Blackstone Group Inc BX.N said on Wednesday it agreed to acquire genealogy provider Ancestry.com Inc from private equity rivals for $4.7 billion, including debt, placing a big bet on family-tree chasing as well as personalized medicine.

Ancestry.com is the world’s largest provider of DNA services, allowing customers to trace their genealogy and identify genetic health risks with tests sent to their home.

Blackstone is hoping that more consumers staying at home amid the COVID-19 pandemic will turn to Ancestry.com for its services.

“We believe Ancestry has significant runway for further growth as people of all ages and backgrounds become increasingly interested in learning more about their family histories and themselves,” David Kestnbaum, a Blackstone senior managing director, said in a statement.

The deal is Blackstone’s first acquisition out of Blackstone Capital Partners VIII, the largest-ever private equity fund that raised $26 billion from investors last year.

Ancestry.com has more than 3 million paying customers in about 30 countries, and earns more than $1 billion in annual revenue. Launched in 1996 as a family history website, it harnessed advances in DNA testing and mobile phone apps in the following two decades to expand its offerings.

(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...


TOPICS:
KEYWORDS: blackstone; ccp; china; genealogy; godsgravesglyphs; helixmakemineadouble; lds; mormons
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To: Golden Eagle
FWIW, here is Ancestry.com's Privacy Statement, Law Enforcement section:

Ancestry does not voluntarily provide data of any kind to governmental or judicial bodies or to law enforcement agencies. To provide our Users with the greatest protection under the law, we require all government agencies seeking access to Ancestry customers’ data to follow valid legal process. We do not allow law enforcement to use Ancestry’s services to investigate crimes or to identify human remains.

If we are compelled to disclose your Personal Information to law enforcement, we will do our best to provide you with advance notice, unless we are prohibited under the law from doing so. Ancestry produces a Transparency Report where we list the number of valid law enforcement requests for user data across all our sites.

I am not an attorney and so can't make a substantive statement about how far the new owner of the company is bound by this, or, for that matter, how the new owner of the data is.

21 posted on 03/03/2023 10:46:34 AM PST by Billthedrill
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To: PGR88
Blackstone, a few years back, bought Ellucian, the largest provider of data management services to colleges and universities. They have potential access to all student records.

They offered free installation of Crowdstrike security software on all client servers. Crowdstrike is connected to deep state Ukraine corruption. How CrowdStrike Became Part of Trump’s Ukraine Call

22 posted on 03/03/2023 10:53:51 AM PST by The Truth Will Make You Free (o )
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To: PeterPrinciple
"We used to learn about our ancestry/heritage by listening to our parents and grandparents telling family stories."

My grandparents were all dead by the time I was born in 1947. My father was born in Holland and came here as a little boy in 1912. My mother was born in Canada in 1920, and came here as a little girl with her only brother, and their mother. There was no family history past the names of my grandparents. My father didn't even know where his own mother was buried as she'd died not long after they arrived here. I didn't find that info out until my brother died in 1995, when a cousin got in touch.

Many years ago I hired a researcher in Holland to search back 6 or 7 generations. He only provided me with great-grandparents, and even then, a lot was missing. When my mother died in 1990, I traveled to Canada to research her side of the family, but there is still a lot of missing info, like what happened to my grandmother's sister? She's not buried next to her husband in who died in the early thirties and is buried in a double plot. She disappeared from the Covington, Kentucky City Directory in the early 50's, and can't be traced. And there is no information on my mother's father who was supposedly a lumberjack in Tweed, Ontario Canada. I have their marriage info, but no death date, and no burial site. I can't even get any WWII service records for my mother's brother, because his records were destroyed in the big fire at the military records center in St. Louis, in 1973.

I'm the last one left of my family. If I hadn't had my DNA tested through Ancestry.com, I never would have known that besides DNA from England and Northwester Europe, I have DNA from Sweden, Denmark, Germanic Empire, Ireland and Scotland. My parents never knew any of that.

23 posted on 03/03/2023 10:54:20 AM PST by mass55th ("Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway." ~~ John Wayne )
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To: Golden Eagle
HEALTHCARE INNOVATION AUGUST 5, 2020 12:05 PM UPDATED 3 YEARS AGO

Three year old article.

24 posted on 03/03/2023 10:57:42 AM PST by Timber Rattler ("To hold a pen is to be at war." --Voltaire)
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To: Golden Eagle

OOOOPS! Shouldn’t have donated your double helix data to science!


25 posted on 03/03/2023 10:59:07 AM PST by one guy in new jersey
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To: Golden Eagle

SO MANY PEOPLE knew this was going to happen !


26 posted on 03/03/2023 11:00:23 AM PST by Celerity
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To: mass55th

The thinking points are we want to know our ancestry/heritage as you demonstrate.

The better way is family stories and you would prefer that over what you got.

So, tell some stories to others so they know their heritage.


27 posted on 03/03/2023 11:01:19 AM PST by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: Billthedrill

“...valid legal process...”

In other words, send us an email and throw in something about it being important or something for us to cough up your intimate deets.


28 posted on 03/03/2023 11:03:06 AM PST by one guy in new jersey
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To: mass55th

https://www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Canada_Census


29 posted on 03/03/2023 11:09:15 AM PST by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: mass55th
She disappeared from the Covington, Kentucky City Directory in the early 50's, and can't be traced.

If she had a Social Security number and died before 2015, there's a good chance you could find her in the SS death records.

30 posted on 03/03/2023 11:11:22 AM PST by kiryandil (China Joe and Paycheck Hunter - the Chink in America's defenses)
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To: Golden Eagle

No one could have seen that coming.


31 posted on 03/03/2023 11:18:14 AM PST by mykroar (what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how. - J0eStalin)
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To: Golden Eagle

So the CCP is going to have everyone’s DNA records. Why could possibly go wrong?


32 posted on 03/03/2023 11:22:27 AM PST by Mathews (I have faith Malachi is right!!! Any day now...)
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To: PeterPrinciple
We used to learn about our ancestry/heritage by listening to our parents and grandparents telling family stories.

And based on what I've learned from family who use ancestry sites with actual historic records, and those who have done dna tests, many of those stories are flat-out wrong.

33 posted on 03/03/2023 11:24:20 AM PST by IYAS9YAS (There are two kinds of people: Those who can extrapolate from incomplete data.)
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To: PeterPrinciple

Because a lot of people want to look at old census records and find family that way to have a complete family tree. I guess I will not be renewing my subscription now. Don’t trust Blackstone


34 posted on 03/03/2023 11:28:35 AM PST by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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To: Flaming Conservative

NO Medicare does not have that record, that is just bs


35 posted on 03/03/2023 11:30:13 AM PST by markman46 (engage brain before using keyboard!!!)
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To: Golden Eagle

Not mine, nor will they ever get it willingly.


36 posted on 03/03/2023 11:45:12 AM PST by Shady (The #JihadJunta: "We are now a nation of Men, Not of Laws. You are not as equal as we are...")
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To: Golden Eagle

This is not good.


37 posted on 03/03/2023 11:46:39 AM PST by vivenne
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To: Mathews

Exactly. No good will come of this.


38 posted on 03/03/2023 11:47:48 AM PST by vivenne
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To: Golden Eagle

Doesn’t matter - they have enough of your DNA through your relatives - they can easily “triangulate” you.


39 posted on 03/03/2023 11:47:59 AM PST by Darth Gill
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To: Darth Gill

Yes. That’s how they find criminals.


40 posted on 03/03/2023 11:49:10 AM PST by vivenne
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