{"id":133747,"date":"2010-01-04T00:42:11","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T05:42:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/?p=7721"},"modified":"2010-01-04T00:42:11","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T05:42:11","slug":"british-national-archives-backs-sale-of-friends-reunited-to-brightsolid-to-give-ancestry-some-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/133747","title":{"rendered":"British National Archives Backs Sale of Friends Reunited to Brightsolid &#8211; to Give Ancestry Some Competition"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that the staid <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalarchives.gov.uk\/\">British National Archives<\/a> is coming forward in support of the sale of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.friendsreunited.co.uk\/\">Friends Reunited<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brightsolid.com\/\">Brightsolid<\/a>. The sale has been somewhat in doubt, as the &#8220;Competition Commission&#8221; has expressed reluctance to allowing the sale to go through. It&#8217;s looks like the principle reason for the support is that the Archives would like to make sure that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ancestry.co.uk\/\">Ancestry.co.uk<\/a> has competition. Following is an excerpt from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/719119b2-f8d0-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html\">an article<\/a> in the January 4, 2010 edition of the <em>Financial Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.friendsreunited.co.uk\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.genealogyblog.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/01\/friendsreunitedlogo.jpg\" alt=\"Friends Reunited\" title=\"Friends Reunited\" width=\"203\" height=\"84\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7724\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The takeover of Friends Reunited, currently facing regulatory scrutiny, has found support from an unlikely quarter &#8211; the National Archives.<\/p>\n<p>The government&#8217;s official archive rarely, if ever, intervenes in competition inquiries but it has backed the proposed sale of the social networking site operator &#8211; and its valuable genealogy subsidiary, Genes Reunited &#8211; to create a bigger rival to a larger American competitor. ITV has agreed to sell Friends Reunited to Brightsolid, a web company owned by DC Thomson, the Scottish publisher.<\/p>\n<p>The National Archives said in a submission to the Competition Commission&#8217;s investigation into the deal that a combination of Genes Reunited with Brightsolid&#8217;s Find My Past site would create &#8220;more robust and serious competition&#8221; to Ancestry.com, the US-based market leader.<\/p>\n<p>If the merger were blocked, &#8220;there is unlikely to be a realistic alternative bid from any existing genealogy company&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The reduction in the number of players would weaken the competitive scene, leaving consumers with less choice of product and pricing,&#8221; it said.<\/p>\n<p>The National Archives said blocking the merger would also result in consumers having less choice in family history data and documents, and the rate of market innovation would slow.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/cms\/s\/0\/719119b2-f8d0-11de-beb8-00144feab49a.html\">Read the full article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It seems that the staid British National Archives is coming forward in support of the sale of Friends Reunited to Brightsolid. The sale has been somewhat in doubt, as the &#8220;Competition Commission&#8221; has expressed reluctance to allowing the sale to go through. It&#8217;s looks like the principle reason for the support is that the Archives [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5171,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-133747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5171"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133747\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}