Footnote.com now part of Ancestry.com

Having grown its database of digitized historical documents over the past four years and based on a successful use-pay model that offered some parts of its database for free, Footnote.com announced on October 21, 02010 that it's been acquired by Ancestry.com as of that date. According to the announcement, "The plan is to continue to run Footnote.com the way we have always run Footnote.com — continuing to do what we believe is best for our customers, our business and our brand." I wonder though how long that will last under Ancestry.com's ownership. The announcement also provided these statistics: "Footnote.com started with only 5 million historical documents and today we have nearly 70 million searchable documents, over 1 million members, nearly 100,000 Footnote Pages, and over half million annotations added."Quite an accomplishment, but let's not forget that some of those records were provided through partnership arrangements with archives such as the National Archives and Records Administration in the United States, who therefore also deserve some credit. I hope that Ancestry.com will honor the agreements that were struck by Footnote.com with organizations such as NARA.