ICQ is shutting down after almost 28 years

May 25, 2024 09:55 PM - 5 months ago 53306

Your ICQ number is yet shuffling disconnected to nan awesome beyond. Russian institution VK, which has been nan service’s steward since 2010, published a connection Friday that simply reads, “ICQ will extremity moving from June 26th,” and implores users to move to its different chat solutions.

ICQ was among nan harvest of early instant messenger services, for illustration AOL Instant Messenger aliases MSN Messenger, that allowed for real-time chats. It differed from others by assigning users a number they would usage to link to 1 another, arsenic opposed to aliases aliases email addresses. It besides had uncommon features for illustration SMS messaging and nan expertise to connection group who were offline.

And of course, those of america of a definite age astir apt retrieve nan “Uh oh!” alert that would play erstwhile you received a message.

ICQ, apparently successful its last shape connected iOS.

Screenshot: The Internet Archive

ICQ was started successful 1996 by Israeli institution Mirabilis, which AOL bought successful 1998. ICQ grew to 100 cardinal registered users astatine 1 point, astatine slightest according to a 2001 merchandise from Time Warner, which had bought AOL a twelvemonth earlier successful a famously doomed merger. AOL sold nan service to Digital Sky Technologies, nan patient that owned VK, past known arsenic Mail.ru, successful 2010.

The modern type of ICQ appeared to person worked and functioned for illustration different messenger apps, specified arsenic WhatsApp aliases Telegram. Or truthful I gathered from a March 2023 Internet Archive snapshot of its iOS App Store listing, arsenic nan app apparently is gone from some Apple’s integer shop and Google’s Play Store (and seemingly has been for months). It seems that ICQ has already been done for immoderate clip — possibly VK is conscionable making it official.

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