The Competition Commission has given provisional go-ahead to ITV for the sale of social networking site Friends Reunited to online genealogy company Brightsolid.

ITV bought Friends Reunited for £170m in December 2005 and announced its intention to sell the business last year after suffering heavy mid-year losses.

Brightsolid already owns genealogy sites FindMyPast.com and 1911Census.com. As Friends Reunited is the parent company of genealogy site, Genes Reunited, Brightsolid's proposed £25m acquisition of Friends Reunited was referred to the Competition Commission when the proposed sale was announced last summer.

The regulator's provisional findings are that this acquisition would not result in a reduction of competition for consumers.

ITV and Brightside have both welcomed the news and the National Archive has also announced its support for the deal.

It is expected that Brightside will merge its existing genealogy sites with Genes Reunited. However, even after this merger, the main player in the market, Ancestry.co.uk, will remain the largest in the market.

The area of genealogy research is growing rapidly, with estimates that approximately 2 million people access genealogy websites in the UK every month.

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