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Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

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    Ancestry.com parent sold for $300 million

    Eric Auchard
    SAN FRANCISCO
    Wed Oct 17, 2007 11:13am EDT
    A screenshot of Ancestry.com, taken on October 17, 2007. The Generations Network Inc (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, said on Wednesday that Spectrum Equity Investors will lead an investment of $300 million to buy a majority stake in the company. REUTERS/www.ancestry.com

    SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The Generations Network Inc (TGN), parent company of Ancestry.com, said on Wednesday that Spectrum Equity Investors will lead an investment of $300 million to buy a majority stake in the company.

    Technology

    Spectrum, a Menlo Park, California-based private equity firm with $4 billion in investments, has been a shareholder in TGN since 2003. Its portfolio includes a variety of financial services, media and communications companies.

    Additional terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

    Ancestry.com has collected more than 5 billion names from historical records and counts 2.5 million active site members.

    TGN owns a portfolio of sites including Ancestry.com and related international sites, myfamily.com, Rootsweb.com and Genealogy.com. Other products include Family Tree Maker software and Ancestry Magazine.

    Ancestry.com, RootsWeb and myfamily.com rank as the second, third- and fourth-largest U.S. "family lifestyle" sites, according to Web traffic measurement company Hitwise. Rival Legacy.com is the No. 1 ranked U.S. site, Hitwise data shows.

    TGN properties have more than 900,000 paying subscribers and receive 8.2 million monthly visitors worldwide, according to the company, which cited comScore data for August.

    Current management will continue to lead the company. Following the deal, Vic Parker and Ben Spero from Spectrum will serve on the company's new board of directors, along with Tim Sullivan, president and chief executive of TGN.

    The acquisition is subject to customary regulatory and closing conditions and is expected to close in 2007.

    Ancestry.com recently introduced the largest collections of U.S. military records and African-American historical records.

    On Tuesday, it introduced a DNA testing service that requires consumers to submit a sample of their personal genetic data with a cheek-swab, analyze and then compare it to DNA Ancestry's database of family histories.

    The service offers two versions of the DNA test. One, called Y-DNA is priced at $149 and tests the Y chromosome passed from father to son. The second test, mtDNA, costs $199 and tests mitochondrial DNA, which mothers pass to children.
    Technology


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