Your letters express much concern that the free use of genealogical data will be captured and placed in the fee-based library over at 'Ancestry'. Quite simply, I believe Brian Leverich and Karen Isaacson, RootsWeb Co-Founders, wouldn't sell us out. You, our users, have helped create at RootsWeb one of the largest and most popular sites on the Internet. This is an incredible community of genealogists, and the advances we're all making in our research due to the sharing that occurs here is unprecedented. The more popular RootsWeb becomes, the more costly it is to simply stay alive and online.
Expenses continue to exceed revenue.
We ran up a truly scary loss last year. Without outside help, it's not clear how long we'd be able to go on like this. They're excited to provide the financial stability we need to ensure RootsWeb will be around for years to come. Someone has to pay for it. If genealogists aren't willing to pay subscription fees to offset costs, then advertising is the alternative.