The iconic instant messenger – ICQ, is shutting down after almost 28 years of loyal service! Here is what you need to know…
ICQ Is Shutting Down : The End Of An Era!
ICQ – it’s been ages since I heard that iconic Uh oh! alert, which still triggers lots of fond memories. After all, it was arguably the most popular instant messenger in the early 2000s.
However, the last day for you to ever hear that Uh oh! alert is this June 25!
That’s because VK announced in a terse notice that it will officially shut down ICQ on June 26, 2024, and invited ICQ users to migrate to VK Messenger, and VK Workspace:
ICQ will stop working from June 26
You can chat with friends in VK Messenger, and with colleagues in VK Workspace
It truly is the end of an era…
It is also a reminder that all software and apps have to evolve, or risk losing out to more agile competitors, and possibly ceasing to exist like ICQ.
Back in the early 2000s, ICQ was king and less than 15 years later, it got canned. That can also happen to ubiquitous apps we have grown to rely on today, like WhatsApp, Telegram, Waze, Google Maps, Twitter (now X), Facebook, etc.
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ICQ Shutting Down : A Brief History
ICQ was created in 1996 by Israeli company Mirabilis, with its name being short for I Seek You. Like other early instant messaging services (remember MSN Messenger?), it allowed people to send messages for free, without the irritating costs and limitations of SMS.
Unlike current instant messengers like WhatsApp, ICQ assigned users a number to connect to one another, instead of mobile numbers or email addresses. It also allowed you to send message to people who were offline. It soon became extremely popular globally, growing to at least 100 million registered users in 2001.
AOL bought ICQ for $407 million in 1998, before it too got bought over by Time Warner. However, ICQ lost out to competitors like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger. Finally, AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies – the Russian firm that owns VK, which bought it in the hope of revealing it.
VK developed new ICQ mobile apps, which helped in grow in 2015, but their development eventually slowed, before stopping completely. The writing was on the wall when ICQ for both iOS and Android were both removed from the Apple App Store, and the Google Play Store.
Thanks for the free messages and the great memories that came with them, ICQ. You will be missed…
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Dr. Adrian Wong has been writing about tech and science since 1997, even publishing a book with Prentice Hall called Breaking Through The BIOS Barrier (ISBN 978-0131455368) while in medical school.
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