Friday, September 21, 2012

Mocavo to Provide FREE Genealogical Records

I received the following information from Cliff Shaw of Mocavo last night, requesting that it not be released until 10 AM MDT (12 noon EDT, 11 AM CDT, 9 AM PDT).  I honored that request.  The information below was written by Mocavo:

Today represents an exciting milestone at Mocavo.  Over our years in both the genealogy and technology industries, we have had few occasions to meet an engineer as talented as Matt Garner.  Matt has deep expertise in the genealogy industry and has few peers in the art of historical record digitization.  We are excited to announce that Matt and his incredible team at ReadyMicro have joined Mocavo.  The ReadyMicro team will continue to operate out of their facility in Orem, Utah and we will maintain our office in Boulder, Colorado, while also adding more employees in both locations.

Now you might ask, “why does a genealogy search engine need digitization?”  The answer is, “Mocavo is no longer just a genealogy search engine.”  From the day the company was founded, our mission has been clear: to bring all of the world’s genealogical information online for free and give everyone the ability to discover their family history.  Over the past several months, we have been working tirelessly to gather genealogical records and connect with other genealogical Web sites.  In the next few weeks, we will make several exciting announcements about these additions that are sure to please family historians.

The acquisition of ReadyMicro gives us the ability to partner with other stewards of genealogical information to help them digitize their records at a very low cost and even, in many cases, at no cost.  In an era where government cutbacks are forcing archives to shut their doors, we will provide a valuable resource to our partners that will enable them to rapidly and cheaply digitize their invaluable collections.

Welcome aboard ReadyMicro and welcome to the new Mocavo!



My first reaction to this announcement is "Super!  More free genealogical records, and more market-based competition in the genealogy world."

My second reaction is:  "What genealogical records has Mocavo been gathering, and which genealogical sites have they been connecting with?"  I look forward to seeing the genealogical resources to be offered by Mocavo, and have absolutely no insight as to what the content might be.  I hope that at least some of the content will be unique - not offered by any other free or subscription record collection site.

The URL for this post is:  http://www.geneamusings.com/2012/09/mocavo-to-provide-free-genealogical.html

Copyright (c) 2012, Randall J. Seaver

1 comment:

Cliff Shaw said...

Hi Randy,

Thanks so much for the wonderful article.

I'm very sorry for the embargo confusion. This was entirely my fault. In haste with an acquisition that came together very quickly, I sent around a number of emails, stating that our blog won't go live until 10 AM the next day. However, looking back through my emails, I didn't make this obvious to Dick Eastman. I just told him to not post until today (but I was ambiguous on the time).

I very much apologize for this. I will make sure to do a much better job on this in the future. I would love to discuss with you privately what records collections we're working on - and certainly give you early access to review ahead of time.

Best Regards,
Cliff Shaw
CEO
Mocavo