Israeli genealogy company MyHeritage Ltd. is continuing its acquisitions campaign with the purchase of US company, FamilyLink.com Inc. that operates websites FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com MyHeritage did not disclose the size of the deal, except to say that they were its seventh and largest acquisition since 2007.
MyHeritage says that the acquisition will expand the company's US business and operations, offering families a vast database of several billion historical records. MyHeritage will also add its first US office, in Provo, Utah, to its offices in Europe, Australia, and Israel.
MyHeritage CEO Gilad Japhet said, "Combining close to one billion family tree profiles on MyHeritage with FamilyLink's massive library of historical data delivers a perfect one-stop-shop for families looking to discover and share their family history."
Founded in 2006, both FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com are subscription services which provide access to a huge database of historical content, covering several billion individuals within census, birth, marriage and death records, as well as the web's largest archive of historical newspapers. This content will deliver new insights and value to the 60 million people who have signed up on MyHeritage in 38 different languages, creating more than 900 million profiles in 21 million family trees. When brought together under the MyHeritage umbrella, the company's innovative Smart Matching technology will automatically match any of the new historical data to the relevant users' ancestors and relatives within the family trees.
MyHeritage has raised $24 million to date from Index Fund and Accel Partners. The company's acquisitions include Pearl Street Software, BackupMyTree.com. European family social network market leader OSN (Verwandt) GmbH; Dutch family network ZOOOF; British family network Kindo.com and Polish family network Bliscy.pl.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 22, 2011
© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2011