1983 — Ancestry Publishing is founded, publishing over 40 family history magazines and genealogy reference books
1990 – Ancestry publications move to floppy disks
1996 – Ancestry.com is launched, paving the way for online family history
1997 – Ancestry offers family history on CDs (compilations of those who use Family Tree Maker)
2000 – Ancestry launches first census images; completes 1930 census in 2003
2001 – Ancestry reaches the 1,000,000,000 record milestone; Ancestry.co.uk debuts
2006 – Ancestry introduces Australian, Canadian and German sites/records
2006 – Ancestry adds new customer-centric innovations (shaky leaf hints and member trees)
2007 – Ancestry adds more international sites, inc. French, Italian, Swedish and Chinese
2009 – Ancestry reaches the 1,000,000 subscriber mark
2010 – Ancestry offers the first season of Who Do You Think You Are?
2011 – Ancestry unveils the Ancestry app for iPad and iPhone
2012 – Ancestry hits the 2,000,000 subscriber mark
2012 – Ancestry DNA is launched
2013 – Ancestry announces exclusive agreement with FamilySearch to digitize one billion records
from its Granita Mountain Vault
2015 – Ancestry releases exclusive collection of U.S. wills and probate records
2018 – Ancestry achieves 10,000,000 people tested via AncestryDNA; 15,000,000 in 2019
2020 – Ancestry reaches over 3.5 million subscribers and 27 billion records
2021 – AncestryDNA tests over 20,000,000 people
2022 – AncestryDNA becomes worldwide
** The above image shows Ancestry’s first magazine publication, 1985-2010. These early publications can be accessed via Google Books.
This is really interesting! We’ve come so far since 1983, and Anc. is no longer the only game in town, which is for the good of all of us researchers in my opinion. I very much wish that all of the research platforms made it easier to do high-quality research instead of “fast and easy copying” but that ship seems to have sailed.