2010-02-09 It’s Our Tree

Verwandt

MyHeritage acquisition

On 2010 Feb 02, a TechCrunch blog entry broke the news that MyHeritage has acquired The OSN Group, colloquially known as Verwandt. Their many international sites include the English DynasTree, originally known as It’s Our Tree.
An official press release trailed the TechCrunch blog entry hours later.

quietly merging

According to the TechCrunch blog entry The companies have been quietly merging the sites together for the last few weeks, and all of OSN’s information, profiles, family trees and pictures should be all live on MyHeritage, as of about thirty minutes ago.
It seems that MyHeritage misinformed TechCrunch, as it took another day for the live numbers on the MyHeritage homepage to reflect the Verwandt Difference of more than 100 million profiles, but that final delay in integrating the data is not interesting. What is interesting is the statement that the companies have been merging the sites together for the last few weeks already, and have been doing so quietly.

After the TechCrunch blog entry came the official press release. After the press release came the MyHeritage blog entry and after that came a number of Verwandt blogs entries; Verwandt has multiple sites for multiple locales, and maintains a separate blog for each language it supports.

users not informed

According to the MyHeritage blog post, The users of these sites and their local versions have been told about the news, but that is not true, and Gilad knows very well it isn’t. After all, informing all users first and brokering a deal with TechCrunch to break the news exclusively are two mutually exclusively options.

MyHeritage and Verwandt had plenty of time to plan the announcement while they were transferring the data already, and the final order (exclusive TechCrunch advertorial, MyHeritage press release, MyHeritage blog entry, Verwandt blog entries) does not seem an accidental one, but an orchestrated one.

The Verwandt users did not receive an email before the TechCrunch blog entry. They did not receive an email before the MyHeritage press release. They did not receive an email before the MyHeritage blog entry. The did not receive an email before the Verwandt blog entries.
In fact, they did not receive an email at all!

apology

On the Verwandt.de forum, users were learning the news from each other and complaining about not being informed. When Verwandt.de finally posted their blog entry, users complained about not being informed first, and Verwandt apologised thus:

Liebe Leute,

dass es im Forum vorher bekannt wurde, tut uns sehr leid. Wir hatten temporär technische Probleme und konnten den Blogpost nicht veröffentlichen.

Translated into English, it reads:

Dear people,

That it become known first on the forum before [this post], we regret that very much. We had temporary technical problems and were unable to publish the blog post.

That Verwandt merely regrets what happened and does not apologise outright and that they only mention how they feel in a comment on their blog post instead of the blog post itself is a further disappointment.

However, the bigger issue is that they have a lot more to answer for and it does not seem impossible that they will have to do some apologising in an European court of justice.

complaints

Even after several days, there isn’t a single comment on the MyHeritage blog entry about the Verwandt acquisition yet. That is remarkable for such a major announcement, especially when you consider that the Verwandt forum and the comments on the Verwandt blog post are filled with complaints about the acquisition and the way it was handled.

violation

One much mentioned complaint is that the users were not informed beforehand. That complaint isn’t mere whining from a bunch of users that would resist any change. It is a bonafide complaint. Not one user was asked to authorise the transfer of their data to MyHeritage, and many feel that the unauthorised transfer of their trees to a third party is a violation of the trust they put in Verwandt. There are users who believe that the unauthorised transfer is a violation of data protection or privacy laws. Several users observed that it seems to be a violation of Verwandt’s own Terms & Conditions, specifically § 8:

§8 Einbeziehung Dritter und Vertragsübernahme durch Dritte

verwandt.de ist berechtigt, Dritte mit der Erbringung von einzelnen Teilen oder des gesamten Leistungsspektrum seiner angebotenen Dienste zu beauftragen. Die Bestimmungen zum Datenschutz bleiben hiervon unberührt.

verwandt.de ist berechtigt (mit einer Ankündigungsfrist von vier Wochen), seine Rechte und Pflichten aus diesem Vertragsverhältnis ganz oder teilweise auf einen Dritten zu übertragen. In diesem Fall ist das Mitglied berechtigt, gem. § 7 Nr.1 zu kündigen.

The DynasTree Terms and Conditions translate it thus:

§ 8 - Transfer of contract to a third party

dynastree has the right to transfer its services partly or completely to a third party. The Privacy Policy remains untouched by this.

dynastree has the right to transfer (with a 4-week term of announcement) its rights and duties of the contractual relationship partly or completely to a third party. In this case, the member has the right to delete the account according to § 7 Nr. 1.

The Terms & Conditions seem clear: Verwandt should have informed all users of its intention to transfer all data to MyHeritage before doing so. Verwandt should have informed all users at least four weeks in advance, to give them ample opportunity to delete their data. That was not done.
Au contraire, MyHeritage and Verwandt started transferring all data weeks before even announcing the acquisition to anyone.

conclusion

The way that MyHeritage and Verwandt handled the acquisition seems a direct violation of Verwandt’s own Terms & Conditions, and possibly a violation of applicable data protection or privacy laws. What is sure is that many Verwandt users are rather unhappy about how they are their data were treated. They are publicly complaining about it and their complaints can be summarised as a formidably familiar reminder: It’s Our Tree.

updates

2010-02-10: MyZooof

The transfer of data from MyZooof to MyHeritage does not seem in accordance with Zooof’s terms and conditions.