Is it true that MyHeritage has "bought" WikiTree and owns it????

Question

I just had a hard-sell call from MyHeritage, and when I retorted "No thanks, I prefer to contribute to WikiTree because it's stringent about accuracy and substantiating claims, unlike MyHeritage which is full of wishful-thinking connections that go viral among members and the wider web", the guy goes "Oh, didn't you know? MyHeritage bought WikiTree: we own it".

I'm so shocked! Can someone tell me if that is true?!

Comments

If My Heritage did own wikitree  and they don't, but lets say that they did, the first thing that would happen is Wikitree would no longer be free.

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Yes, if they owned WikiTree, it would not only be very expensive, but also full of google-translated language and full of people spawning fake connections to notables. The MyHeritage seller was very insistent and patronised with "you didn't know we bought WikiTree? Ah, I can tell you're not so clued up on all the ins and outs of MyHeritage". Me, I'm going to submit a formal complaint to MyHeritage tomorrow.

Thank you for the reassurance!

Answer 1

Absolutely not true!

Answer 2

As one who both uses their service and gets regular updates from them, there has been nothing of the sort mentioned.

Besides, that would nullify the 4th statement on the WikiTree landing page

Answer 3

Shows something about MyHeritage, doesn't it, that they don't have better control over their salespeople.

Comments

Their sales people clearly think nothing of telling lies!!

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One of their customer service people hung up on me a couple of months ago because he disagreed with what I was saying. I've never had this happen to me at any company before!

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ugh, thanks for adding that story - that only adds to scariness of MyHeritage even aspiring to acquire WikiTree...

Answer 4

My Heritage does NOT own Wikitree.

But they have purchased and they do now own the Legacy Family tree software company (based in the USA). This happened I think toward the end of 2019 - about a year ago.

FYI

About My Heritage - I did place my family tree on that site during the 2 years I was a member (2 of my prizes from the source-a-thon). I had to work very hard to keep the errors off.

Now that I am no longer a member, My tree (hopefully) is safe from anyone else trying to add the wrong people. I have so many matches that I have ignored simply because many of them were wrong.

Comments

The matches did share DNA with you, didn't they?  The only thing wrong was the "Theory of Family Relativity" (or whatever they call it), wasn't it?

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My Heritage also has family suggestions, like Ancestry has the leaf (nothing to do with DNA). The problem is, MH sends me an email about a suggestion, and it is one person who is part of a family group of 50 people. As far as I can see, they come as a package deal. I can't choose to accept the correct people and reject those who are in the wrong family. If you think Ancestry encourages junk trees, at least they're only suggesting one person at a time. Junk can proliferate much faster using the MH method.

Answer 5

What a bizarre experience!  I uploaded my DNA to MyHeritage in 2016.  They send me frequent e-mails telling me about new DNA matches, but have never made any kind of hard-sell pitch whatsoever.

Edited to add:  I have never paid them anything.  They do send e-mails now and then suggesting I subscribe (as I recall), but they are easy to delete.

Answer 6

I have never had any genealogy site call me, ever. So I can't help but wonder whether that was actually somebody from MyHeritage, or a scammer who happens to know that you're into genealogy. A scammer will say anything.

(Not that I'm defending MyHeritage. I don't see it as being any better than most of them. But cold-calling people with high pressure tactics strikes me as odd.)

Comments

Thank you for your supportive outrage. For three years now, every time I intentionally fail to renew my MyHeritage subscription, I get 2 pushy phone calls from them to offer me a discount incentive to renew. I also get emails offering same, and the deal gets better and better - finally it was a 75% discount, and in the instant I clicked the link to renew the sub, they called me from MyHeritage to offer me an additional 50% on a "5 year plan for loyal subscribers". I just 'accept' all that as their pushy desperado business. But I couldn't accept that the guy told me "Oh, you don't seem to understand: we bought WikiTree, so we OWN it". He really said that, and they really are that pushy! Thanks again...

Answer 7

I have an account with MyHeritage and one thing they do is send me 'hints' based on family trees from various genealogy sites, one of which is WikiTree. 99% of the time, the hint is actually a WikiTree profile that I created myself. So maybe that's what he meant?

Comments

Thanks for your calming suggestion, but no, that is definitely not what the MyHeritage sales guy meant! When I retorted that I only considered renewing a subscription to MyHeritage "for laughs", or fr the odd wild claim to corroborate properly on WikiTree, he told me specifically that MyHeritage had bought WikiTree and therefore own  it, just as they had acquired Geni, FamilySearch, Legacy (which I knew). The fact that I subscribe to MyHeritage for real money, only to get my own-efforts on WikiTree served up as a special gift discovery for me from MyHeritage adds to the 'insult' of being told "oh, we own WikiTree" - as if my efforts on WikiTree were all much of a muchness, since it's all MyHeritage anyway! I am reassured now here on WikiTree that this was a lie to get me to buy a 5-year sub on MyHeritage!

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If he claimed they had also acquired FamilySearch, that was another bare-faced lie!

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oh yikes - thanks so much for pointing out that FamilySearch is also not under MyHeritage ownership!