The genealogy company Ancestry has been acquired by investment firm Blackstone for $4.7 billion, changing ownership of the company and its trove of user-submitted DNA from a set of investment firms to another private equity firm. From a report: The announcement was made in a press release published earlier this week by Blackstone, which shared it had "reached a definitive agreement to acquire Ancestry from Silver Lake, GIC, Spectrum Equity, Permira, and other equity holders for a total enterprise value of $4.7 billion." Ancestry is known for its genealogy and home DNA testing services. According to its website, the company has 3 million paying subscribers, 27 billion records, and 100 million family trees. The website also says that over 18 million people have been DNA tested through the company.

"To be crystal clear, Blackstone will not have access to user data and we are deeply committed to ensuring strong consumer privacy protections at the company," a spokesperson for Blackstone told Motherboard in an email. "We will not be sharing user DNA and family tree records with our portfolio companies." A spokesperson from Ancestry also said the company's relationship with its users would remain the same.

A massive attack has hit Reddit today after at least tens of Reddit channels (subreddits) have been hacked and defaced to show messages in support of Donald Trump's reelection campaign, ZDNet reports. From the report: The hacks are still ongoing at the time of writing, but we were told Reddit's security team is aware of the issue and has already begun restoring defaced channels. A partial list of impacted channels (subreddits) is available below, according to ZDNet's research: r/NFL, r/49ers, r/TPB (The Pirate Bay's Reddit channel), r/BlackMirror, r/Beer, r/Vancouver, r/Dallas, r/Gorillaz, r/Podcasts, r/freefolk, r/StartledCats, r/TheDailyZeitgeist, r/Supernatural, r/GRE, r/GMAT, r/greatbritishbakeoff, r/11foot8, r/truecrimepodcasts, r/Leafs, r/weddingplanning, r/Chadsriseup, r/bertstrips, r/CFB ...and many many other more.

As Google faces at least four major antitrust investigations on two continents, internal documents obtained by The Markup show its parent company, Alphabet, has been preparing for this moment for years, telling employees across the massive enterprise that certain language is off limits in all written communications, no matter how casual. From a report: The taboo words include "market," "barriers to entry," and "network effects," which is when products such as social networks become more valuable as more people use them. "Words matter. Especially in antitrust law," reads one document titled "Five Rules of Thumb for Written Communications." "Alphabet gets sued a lot, and we have our fair share of regulatory investigations," reads another. "Assume every document will become public."

The internal documents appear to be part of a self-guided training session for a wide range of the company's more than 100,000 employees, from engineers to salespeople. One document, titled "Global Competition Policy," says it applies not only to interns and employees but also to temps, vendors, and contractors. The documents explain the basics of antitrust law and caution against loose talk that could have implications for government regulators or private lawsuits.