The big genealogical news of late is the acquisition of Find A Grave by Ancestry.com. A significant percentage of the people who are talking about this seem to fear that Ancestry.com plans to eventually make Find A Grave part of their pay-to-play site (not likely). A much smaller contingent remembers the glory days of Rootsweb and think Find A Grave, too, will be similarly gutted (again, I don’t think so).

Though the “poor, dedicated Jim Tipton” myth continues to circulate, the fact is that Find A Grave generated enough advertising revenue to allow him to quit his day job. So there’s no reason for Ancestry.com to charge for the site and every reason for them to continue to develop it, though most of the ads will probably now be for Ancestry.com’s products and services.

The deal was negotiated for months — though not specifically stated, it was obvious from . . . [Yes! There’s more!]