On the peak of its reputation, ICQ was utilized by 100 million folks. It lastly went silent on June 26, 2024 as a result of a small variety of customers.
The Russian firm VK, which has operated the ICQ service since 2010, introduced its finish on the finish of Might this 12 months, saying: “ICQ will cease working from June 26.” On the identical time, it requested the remainder of the customers who had been nonetheless utilizing it to change to different chat options. On Wednesday, June 26, ICQ is admittedly lifeless, the web site encourages using VK Messenger.
ICQ was among the many first on the spot messenger providers, resembling AOL On the spot Messenger or MSN Messenger, that allowed folks to talk in actual time over the Web. It differed from different related providers in that it assigned customers a quantity that they used to attach with one another — versus nicknames or electronic mail addresses. It additionally had different uncommon options on the time that individuals favored and that led to the acute reputation of the service. These included, for instance, the power to ship SMS messages and the power to ship messages to individuals who had been offline.
For a lot of customers, they had been additionally typical for his or her sounds – particularly the basic “O ou”, which sounded as a notification when a brand new message arrived.
Beginnings in Israel, ending in Russia
ICQ was based in 1996 by the Israeli firm Mirabilis, which was purchased by the massive firm AOL in 1998. ICQ grew to 100 million registered customers at one level, at the least in keeping with a 2001 announcement by Time Warner, which merged with AOL in a serious merger. which a bit later led to wonderful failure. In 2010, AOL offered the service to Digital Sky Applied sciences, which owned a Russian model of Fb known as VK, then often known as Mail.ru.
It was the social networks that created their very own functions for on-line chat that prompted the downfall of the beforehand well-known model. As an alternative of ICQ, folks at the moment use Messenger of Fb, WhatsApp or iMessage from Apple. One more reason for the outflow of consumers was the takeover by a Russian investor. Critics identified on the time that using ICQ may very well be related to safety issues, resembling knowledge leakage.
Czech manner
ICQ was additionally very talked-about within the Czech Republic, primarily as a result of it was initially operated and intensively supported by Centrum Holdings. Within the spring of 2012, it was taken over by TV Nova s.r.o., which operated the TV Nova tv station. From this acquisition, the administration on the time promised to extend its affect within the on-line atmosphere, wherein at the moment it was attempting to develop with, for instance, the information portal tn.cz or the video portal Nova.cz.
