Ancesty.com is Discontinuing Family Tree Maker!!

Citing the decline in the desktop software market Ancestry.com is making one of the stupidest decisions I have ever seen.  They are discontinuing their Family Tree Maker.  Sales will end at the end of this year and support will end in 2017. 

Why is this the worst idea I have seen:

1. I don't know a single serious genealogist that doesn't use some sort of desktop software to organize their database.  They use it to:

• Create charts and reports
• Show a view of a tree for relatives and other people
• Detect anomalies in their tree.

2. FTM downloaded all of the images and media that I attached to my tree automatically.  Now I guess I have to go back and download all of my media that I have been storing inside of Family Tree Maker.

3.  It gave us a good way to use Ancestry but still maintain our data separately and a way that we could be independent from Ancestry's service if we wanted to.

I am pretty mad!


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