03 August 2017

MyHeritage Acquires Legacy

Late Thursday afternoon press releases announcing the acquisition of Legacy (Millenium Corporation and FamilyTreeWebinars) by MyHeritage arrived.

The first announcement contains a time-limited half-price offer from Legacy. I've recommended FamilyTreeWebinars before. Half price for an annual subscription is a deal. See the links below.

Further comment below the press releases.

Legacy Announcement
We are proud to share with you the biggest step forward we have ever made with our Legacy Family Tree software and our FamilyTreeWebinars.com webinar series. We have entered into an acquisition agreement with MyHeritage, a leading global destination for family history and DNA with 91 million users in 196 countries. The acquisition will provide the resources and cutting edge technologies to advance and expand both our #1 rated software and our #1 rated webinar series. Think Legacy is good now? Watch out future – here we come!

How will all this affect you? Entirely positively. Here’s a flavor of what you can expect in the future:

• A host of new features in Legacy software – we will be developing future versions of Legacy together. We have already started working on the new Tree Sync feature (to optionally have your Legacy file in a private or collaborative tree at MyHeritage)
Improved webinar platform to surpass the 1,000-virtual seat limitation we currently have
Significant discounts on MyHeritage services and DNA kits for Legacy users and webinar viewers not available anywhere else
Most importantly, you can expect the same high-quality support and service that you have come to expect from us. The entire Legacy and webinar teams will continue on at MyHeritage in our existing roles.

“The more I’ve learned about and experimented with MyHeritage, the more I have felt we need to partner together,” said Geoff Rasmussen, founder of the FamilyTreeWebinars.com webinar series and “the face” of Legacy Family Tree software. “The technology behind their online trees and historical records is incredible – second to none. MyHeritage has positioned itself to become the leader of the future of the genealogy industry and we can be a part of it. It’s the perfect match – our software and webinars combined with their resources, technologies, and international reach will help both of us accomplish our mission – to help the world find their ancestors.”

We have published a separate article on our blog that addresses more of the details and has answers to questions you might have. Just as we are excited to contribute to the success of our new owners at MyHeritage, they, too, are anxious to elevate our Legacy software and webinar series to levels that have been beyond our reach.

To celebrate the acquisition, we are offering a limited time, never-offered-before discount on Legacy 9 software and annual webinar memberships. Through Sunday, August 13 (Geoff’s birthday), take 50% off:

- Legacy 9 software – from $34.95 $17.48
- 1 year webinar membership (or extension) – $49.95 $24.98

Click here to get Legacy software or webinar membership at 50% off.

Thank you all for your continuing support as we enter this exciting new chapter in the Millennia story.

Best regards,
Dave, Ken, Geoff, and everyone at the Legacy Family Tree / Millennia team

MyHeritage Announcement

TEL AVIV, Israel & SURPRISE, Arizona, August 3, 2017 — MyHeritage, the leading global destination for family history and DNA testing, announced today its acquisition of Millennia Corporation, makers of the popular genealogy desktop software Legacy Family Tree and genealogy webinar platform, Legacy Family Tree Webinars. This is MyHeritage's ninth acquisition to date.

With hundreds of thousands of devoted users since 1997, Legacy Family Tree consistently ranks among the top three most popular and highly rated genealogy software products in the industry. The Legacy Family Tree Webinar platform — which has amassed a large and dedicated fan base since 2010 — draws speakers who are leaders in their field and covers a wide variety of topics, including genealogical research methodology, DNA, and historical records, representing a full array of educational genealogy content.

MyHeritage, which has developed a world-class, global mobile and Web platform for family trees, historical records and DNA testing, used by more than 90 million users worldwide, will now offer its services to Legacy's users.

Legacy Family Tree will retain its full staff and continue developing its software and webinar platform, backed by MyHeritage's resources. Millennia Corporation and MyHeritage have started joint work on a new version of the Legacy Family Tree software — version 10 — which will include the optional capability to sync family trees to MyHeritage’s website and use the free MyHeritage mobile app to make remote updates to their family trees on the Legacy software. Legacy Family Tree version 9 has already integrated matching to MyHeritage's 40 million family trees and to its historical records collection — which surpassed 8 billion records this week.

Legacy Family Tree Webinars will continue to feature diverse and informative content, and will be promoted to the millions of MyHeritage users, to increase the webinars' audience. The webinar platform will also enjoy infrastructure upgrades to support increased concurrent viewership.

“We are very happy with the Legacy Family Tree acquisition as it gives us valuable assets that are highly complementary to our own, and a solid team.” said Gilad Japhet, Founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “We look forward to providing Legacy's software and webinar platform with useful upgrades, and to welcoming Legacy’s huge user base of experienced genealogists to enhance their genealogical explorations through MyHeritage's services.”

“The more I’ve learned about and experimented with MyHeritage, the more I have felt we need to partner together,” said Geoff Rasmussen, founder of Legacy Family Tree Webinars. “The technology behind their online trees and historical records is incredible — second to none. MyHeritage has positioned itself to become the leader of the future of the genealogy industry and we can be a part of it. It’s the perfect match: our software and webinars combined with their resources, technologies, and international reach will help both of us accomplish our mission — to help the world find their ancestors.”


“I’m excited for us to join forces with MyHeritage,” said Dave Berdan, President of Millennia Corporation. “MyHeritage clearly cares for genealogists and continues to invest in desktop genealogy software, in contrast to one of its major rivals that has done the opposite, shutting down its desktop genealogy software and then selling it off. As we’re passionate about genealogy, our team is happy to have found in MyHeritage kindred spirits and we’re excited about the value that we can create together to benefit millions of genealogists worldwide.”

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Comment: MyHeritage continues on a growth and acquisition path befitting a major commercial genealogy player. The companies are a good fit. The acquisition will strengthen MyHeritage's place, especially in the major US market, and provide new support to Legacy. While MyHeritage (Alexa rank about 6,000) is well back of Ancestry (Alexa rank 1,000) nad FamilySearch the company is moving ahead fast.

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