ICQ closes. The old messaging system will end its run after about 30 years. The announcement was made via the service’s official website, where the company simply stated that “ICQ it will stop working from June 26th“.
Now, ICQ suggests users to move to VK Messenger if you are a private user and VK WorkSpace if you use it at work. Recall that VK is the company that purchased ICQ from AOL in 2010.
It is a ending a little bitter and not very celebratory of the value that ICQ has had over the years, given that it was the first real program that allowed you to send messages in real time with anyone in the world. Let’s remember that the system arrived in a period where emails, chatrooms and forums were still a novelty for many internet users.
ICQ history in brief and a possible return
ICQ – acronym used for represent the phrase “I seek you” (pronounce the letters in English and you will understand why) or “I’m looking for you” – was made by an Israeli company known as Mirabilis. In 1998 it was purchased by AOL for $407 million.
The system assigned a identification number to a user that could be used to search for a person and talk to them. The chat offers a series of functions that today we would consider obvious, but which were new at the time.
ICQ had passed 100 million users in 2001 but over the years it has lost the battle with other instant messaging systems, especially on smartphones. In 2010, VK bought ICQ with the aim of bringing back the application, which was quite popular in Russia.
One arrived in 2014 mobile version of ICQ which helped the app grow, but after several attempts to evolve the service VK abandoned ICQ. The iOS and Android apps were also removed from the App Store and Google Play.
In a Twitter message, ICQ however appears suggest that this is not truly the endsharing a gif of the Terminator that reads “I’ll be back.”
How many of you have used ICQ?
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