Recent news in the genealogy world is that a 75% stake in Ancestry.com has recently been sold to the invenstment company Blackstone.

Here’s part of the press release from Blackstone …

New York, August 5, 2020 – Blackstone (NYSE:BX) today announced that private funds managed by Blackstone (“Blackstone”) have reached a definitive agreement to acquire Ancestry® from Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and other equity holders for a total enterprise value of $4.7 billion. Current Ancestry investor GIC will continue to retain a significant minority stake in the company. This transaction represents the first control acquisition for Blackstone’s eighth vintage of its flagship private equity vehicle.

It continues …

Margo Georgiadis, President and Chief Executive Officer of Ancestry, said: “Our entire leadership team is thrilled to have the opportunity to partner with Blackstone to further accelerate Ancestry’s global leadership in family history and consumer genomics, and to help us achieve our mission to empower journeys of personal discovery to enrich lives. Looking ahead, in collaboration with Blackstone, we will continue to leverage our unique content, powerhouse consumer brand and technology platform to expand our global Family History business while bringing to life our long-term vision of personalized preventive health.”

Howard Hochhauser, Ancestry’s Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer, added: “We want to thank Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity and Permira for their support in helping set up Ancestry for our next phase of growth.”

This announcment has the genealogy social media world going crazy, wondering just what this announcment meant. Is this a good thing? Should I be worried? Should I take my tree and/or DNA off Ancestry? What does this sale mean for me? And so on…

There have been numerous follow-ups from bloggers over the past week, so I’m going to direct you to their posts, so you can have a read of what they say about it all.

So in the words of one of our favourite wellknown genies, Judy Russell’s words… it’s just “business as usual” for now.