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Blackstone to Acquire Ancestry.com for $4.7B
- peterlk 6y agoThis has huge, far reaching privacy concerns. How many folks here would like to give their DNA information to private equity?
- swarnie_ 6y agoI don't see it making a difference. If someone is willing to give away their DNA in the first place i doubt they care who to. Outside of this community how many people submitting their DNA to Ancestry looked up their privacy, data selling policies and shareholders? I don't imagine many.
- snarf21 6y agoHopefully your family members haven't already done so for you.
- llsf 6y agoExactly this! This is not just a personal privacy decision (i.e. I give or not my DNA). If any of my family gave their DNA, I am now traceable. This is exponentially bad, and not regulated accordingly. The Blackstone Group is the private equity owning Motel 6... the very same Motel 6 that voluntary helped ICE by giving guest lists ?!? So what is next ? They also owned several companies in healthcare, including a company doing respiratory equipments and another one providing medical services. DNA collection should be regulated way more strictly.
- csomar 6y agoNot trying to defend blackstone but they have half a trillion in AUM. I highly doubt they were directly involved in such decision.
- obmelvin 6y agoI don't understand what their AUM has to do with it?
- derivagral 6y agoI believe GP was trying to say that management of the owning company doesn't necessarily spend a great deal of time going through all the ongoing details of every business owned, compared to a company that might only have Ancestry.com as an asset. I don't think this really alleviates concerns people have though.
- t-c-h 6y agoYou can be traced in many, many ways. From all the websites you visit, the accounts you have, social media posts and pictures, connections with others, camera's outside, your car, your job, whatever more. There's very little true privacy in modern urban life. Yet, while privacy issues are a point of concern among geneticists when it comes to direct-to-consumer genetic testing, the general points of caution are directed to relational and emotional issues. Many people think little of the relational consequences genetic testing can bear, where family members are implicated often unwillingly. Another point is that people often make up wrong conclusions about their results and see them as some infallible passport of who they are, while the tests are limited in what they actually can tell. Or let's say tests show you have a disposition for increased disease risk. I doubt many give it a really good thought of whether they truly want to know and live with said knowledge for the rest of their lives.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tyingq 6y ago"Blackstone is buying Ancestry.com from private equity firms Silver Lake, Spectrum Equity and Permira." That cat was already out of the bag.
- dannykwells 6y agoThis - everyone freaking out over this is right, but ummmm, years too late.
- BurningFrog 6y agoDid it many years ago. Would do it again.
- RocketSyntax 6y agoyou have no idea how deep this goes. nations are selling data at population scale
- pontifier 6y agoI'm not sure DNA is something that is even possible to protect. You leave samples of it everywhere you go, and you share most of it with everyone else anyway. I happen to think my DNA is pretty good, but it's not like I had anything to do with that. It's more like I happen to like the seed for the minecraft world I'm playing. I don't feel like I own my DNA in the same way that I own property or things. It helped me be who I am, but why would I stop someone else from looking at it or trying to use it in some way? As long as I get to keep using it, I'm happy.
- naruvimama 6y agoCan we not have our DNA information deleted on demand. At least within the EU it comes under GDPR. Any leaks make ancestory responsible, that can be huge.
- simonebrunozzi 6y agoI coined a phrase about it: "Anything that can be leaked, it eventually will."
- pixxel 6y agoPeople who hand over their DNA won’t care in the slightest. For the rest of us this confirms our understanding.
- Paul-ish 6y agoWhat understanding is that?
- danhak 6y agoThat it's foolish to have your genome in a database because there is no guarantee with regard to how that data may be used or misused in the future, or even who will own it.
- wolco 6y agoThat's like saying it's foolish to have your photos in a database.. Or Name... because someone might misuse it.
- tengbretson 6y agoThat very well might be the case.
- interestica 6y agoHow does this affect ancestry.ca, the Canadian wing? Is it operated separately? I suspect other laws might come into play for Canadian use data?
- danhak 6y agoCorrect. See, for example, this story about a man being arrested and jailed for a crime he didn’t commit because his photo was in a database: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recognition-arrest.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/24/technology/facial-recogni... The implications for misuse of genetic information are even more serious.
- cordite 6y agoSome commentary from another that actively does genealogy as a hobby: i think it will be good cause the old guys were mis managing In what ways? I know several 3rd party developers that were just begging for the opportunity to talk to anybody in the organization about how they could configure there software to have the least impact possible on Ancestry, and they wouldn't reply. And then one day they sent a Cease and Desist order, which alienated thousands of customers who relied on those 3rd party apps. Stuff like that. Nobody listens there. ah the totally "This is our IP, you can't use it" vs "This is a sales opportunity" mindset. it's worse than that, they just didn't care.. and then they tried to sell themselves and wanted to minimize costs, and blamed 3rd party guys for how backed up their servers were and bad mouthed them. Tried to make themselves look more profitable than they are bad culture thing. almost a monopoly and it's a reputable private equity place - not some vulture company somebody that will come in and challenge their business model but not tell them how to run their business
- Dirlewanger 6y agoAh yes, a PEG purchasing a company. History has shown that this will obviously result in good things for the company!
- hans 6y agoThought same: with covid depressed co’s the leveraged buyouts / peg activities driven by politically connected free cash is coming big time .. talent will get suckered into debt so these players take it
- tosser0001 6y agoAs someone who is interested in genealogy it's a bit frustrating to have so many different services competing to hoover up various data sets and hold them in their private fiefdoms, each of which requires a fee. FamilySearch is the one major exception, mostly I believe because of their deep religious obligations. The Mormons microfilmed a staggering collection of data over the decades and it has all been getting digitized. The problem is, some of their digitized collections are now no longer available because the custodians of the original records seem to have signed deals with some of the private genealogy services. Ancestry and companies like them, do provide the service of indexing many of these records which is no small task, but most of these documents are public records, and I don't understand why they shouldn't be available to anyone. I know for example FamilySearch has digitized images of all the Scottish censuses back to the 1841 but you can't look at the original records any longer. There are many other examples like this... original WWII draft cards for the US used to be available there, now you have to go to Ancestry and pay a fee.
- bitbckt 6y agoSurely there must be a solution to this problem which involves neither privatization of massive amounts of personal data nor vicarious baptism.
- ksenzee 6y agoThe vicarious baptism is going to happen regardless.
- hinkley 6y agoYou will 1) be dead, so probably not care, and 2) in the unlikely event that you do still care, they believe that you have the opportunity to opt out.
- function_seven 6y agoYup. I very much want the Mormons to posthumously baptize me! I mean, it will probably do absolutely nothing. But, if it does have an effect, I will be eternally (literally) grateful for their help in the afterlife.
- sillysaurusx 6y agoI changed my mind about DNA acquisition / privacy concerns after reading the backstory of the Golden State Killer: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_James_DeAngelo Officers uploaded DNA from a rape kit and got back a family tree, then investigated all 2,000 possibilities. Problem solved. He’d eluded capture till the ripe old age of 77 or so, after having raped around 50 women and murdering several by beating them to death with logs. Can someone help me understand some concrete scenarios where DNA testing is clearly a bad thing? Because it seems to be a net win for society. Leave your DNA at a crime scene -> you’ve left your ID.
- jdright 6y agoIt really looks like something useful, until it will be misused. It is not a matter of if, but of when. So, better to not have this at all, even if the price to pay is if some cases will go unsolved. You must think about the worse case and consider the consequences. Think about a reelect Trump feeling empowered using such a thing, don't know, to target minorities with his white supremacist ideals. If this is too much for you, consider China with Uighurs instead. Make this 100x worse considering this is a private enterprise.
- engineer_22 6y agoThe authoritarian Left is just as much a concern as Trump. Consider China with the... Wait, you already said China.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- foofoo55 6y agoBecause a crime scene might also have the DNA of innocent people. Because public DNA information could be a source of prejudice mis-used by government, law enforcement, health services, employers, even family, friends, and potential spouses. Because in all likelihood it would become another way to generate targeted advertising.
- yters 6y agoWhy is genealogical data so valuable?
- B4CKlash 6y agoThere's an incredible amount of uses for high quality genealogical data: -Actuaries/insurance companies: Longevity is largely heritable -Drug Development/Pharma: The newest drugs are all gene therapies and data sets provide amble grounds for deep neural networks. Identifying potential causes of curable conditions, or identify a marketable consumer base. -Police/Surveillance: I believe a genealogy database is actually how the Golden State killer was caught. Certainly there are other use cases, but these are the most obvious to me.
- mypalmike 6y agoMarketing based on genetic predispositions...
- cblconfederate 6y agoIs the first legal? The second .. there are big public DNA databases, and they are adding more and more people every day The third one seems the most important
- GnarfGnarf 6y agoProven, documented genealogy, coupled with genetics, is the Holy Grail of medical and pharmaceutical research. It's worth billions, because it could hold the key to the cure for cancer and other diseases.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lalo2302 6y agoBecause it's a powerful tool. You are your DNA, literally. And when a company has so many information about people, some other actor will want that information and becomes pricy. Like instagram. Why did facebook paid 1 billion USD for a company that generated 0 revenue? For the amount of users and information they have. And to twist a bit your question. Why is it so valuable AND sensible? Because imagine in 10 years, you get a kid and he wants to get a job, and because you gave your DNA away to some random company, now owned by the biggest employer of your state, they do not hire him. The reason? He has 5% chance of developing a sickness which might drain the medical coverage of said employer. We would be reduced to numbers and probabilities. Labels attached to our biology.
- a3n 6y agoBeware changes to TOS. That seems a particularly dangerous dataset. When you buy a rental property you have to abide by current leases until they expire. There out to be something roughly similar for PII, acquisition, including actively enduring that everyone can have their days expunged.
- iav 6y agoI’m a former investor in the company. Many comments here focus on the DNA business, but the company treats it as more as lead gen, a “cheap” way to get new customers in and later to subscribe to their family tree product that prints cash. The DNA business is breakeven but that’s a lot cheaper than funding TV shows like Who Do You Think You Are - which was their old marketing tool. Funny anecdotes: - they own findagrave.com which is exactly what it sounds like - they paid $50mm at one point to the Mormon church to effectively shut down their only competitor (family search.org). They also offered ancestry.com membership for free to every Mormon as well. The agreement handed over Mormon church’s records making Ancestry’s database broader. - they sometimes call themselves a “Social Network for dead people” because you can opt to make your family tree public, allowing you to see connections/overlaps between your ancestors and others.
- ensignavenger 6y agoAs far as I am aware, familysearch.org is still quite operational?
- iav 6y agoThey are definitely still operational but they no longer compete with Ancestry for content like they used to. In fact they rely on Ancestry to digitize their own archives
- freeopinion 6y agoThis deserves some clarification. FamilySearch has a massive crowd-sourcing organization for volunteer indexing. Anybody can participate in their free time.
- zwily 6y agoFamilySearch is alive and well. What are you talking about there?
- iav 6y ago
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- djhaskin987 6y agoThis is huge! Congratulations to a Ancestry! This is one of a few billion-dollar-plus exits of a startup company in Utah over the past 2 years, with others such as Qualtrics and PluralSight also coming to mind. We're starting to see more unicorns come out of Utah. As someone who lives in Utah, that's great!
- RocketSyntax 6y agomistake. their data is trash. contains less than 1% of genome.
- kobbad 6y agoYep, agreed. If you look at companies like Nebula Genomics [1] (disclosure: I'm a founder) or Dante Labs [2], they're doing whole genome sequencing for comparable prices. I'm not sure why we aren't seeing a more prevalent shift to next-gen seqencing. [1] https://nebula.org https://nebula.org [2] https://dantelabs.com https://dantelabs.com
- moneywoes 6y agoDo any of these sources work for new immigrants?
- Evidlo 6y agoI'm surprised Wikitree isn't mentioned in this thread anywhere. Its a nonprofit.
- mesozoic 6y agoWell this sounds nefarious. A group buddy buddy with governmental and NGO agencies owning ancestry. What could go wrong...