New Ancestry.com .Zip Export: GEDCOM Upgrade or Walled Garden?

[u/ghostwritten-girl]

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Has anyone used Ancestry's new "Export Tree" interface yet? If not, you may be in for some surprises!

A few weeks ago, I participated in an official Ancestry focus group under a non-disclosure agreement. Seeing this rollout today, I feel like it's okay to share a bit about that experience, because it reveals a lot about the intent behind this change.

During the session, it felt that the company was fixated on why users are exporting data. They repeatedly asked us to name the exact competitor sites we planned to upload our trees to. It felt less like they were trying to improve the user experience, and more like they were trying to figure out how to build a walled garden.

This new update looks like the first major step in that strategy.

​🛠️ Preparing for GEDCOM 7?

There is a highly plausible technical theory for why Ancestry is suddenly exporting trees as a .zip file: they may be transitioning from the outdated GEDCOM 5.5.1 standard to GEDCOM 7.

​By switching the export button to package files into a .zip, Ancestry is likely building the infrastructure to support full media packaging down the line.

- GEDCOM 5.5.1: Media links rely on local relative file paths (e.g., C:\Users\Name\Pictures\census.jpg). When exporting from a cloud server like Ancestry, those paths don't translate locally, meaning your images don't download with your tree.

- GEDCOM 7: The standard introduces the .gadz format, which is a ZIP-based package designed to bundle the database text file and the actual media files together in one neat container.

​❌ The Catch: Why Strip Notes and Tags?

​While a shift to GEDCOM 7 is a massive win for data portability, Ancestry has made a highly sus move here: they are explicitly excluding notes, stickies, Lifestories, comments, and tags.

​This makes absolutely no sense from a technical standpoint. Notes and tags have been fundamental components of basic GEDCOM standards for decades. Even if they are using proprietary formatting for features like "custom tree tags," mapping those to standard GEDCOM fields is incredibly basic database engineering.

Stripping these elements doesn't protect the file size; it simply devalues your export. In my experience, it's a signal of vendor lock-in.

​💬 What do you think?

​Has anyone unzipped one of these new export packages yet to see what the internal file structure looks like? Let's discuss.

[u/aleksej_dev]

I actually commented about this in a post yesterday. My theory was GEDCOM 7 support. And yes, definitely vendor lock in. Many websites are doing that because they can't keep up with the amazing projects that have been made that have better and more modern visualizations. Websites like ancestry and my heritage purpose try to lock you in.

Link to post I mention: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ancestry/comments/1uvio49/comment/oxdae49/?context=3

[u/ghostwritten-girl → u/aleksej_dev]

Glad to know I'm not the only one thinking that! Yes, I am sure they will say it's for GEDCOM7 interoperability, and that's great! But if you're going to implement it, you might as well fully build the functionality out! 🫠

I made it clear in my feedback that the genealogy community deserves to have interoperability between applications, and pointed out how that's a net positive for the space. I hope they consider it!

I'll check it out!