Instant messaging platform ICQ to shut down on June 26, after nearly 28 years
At almost 28 years old, ICQ (pronounced I seek you) would seem fairly young by human standards.
But among instant messaging platforms, it is a dinosaur, preceding even Yahoo Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.
And like the dinosaurs, it will soon go extinct, with its impending shutdown slated for June 26, according to its official website.
Launched in November 1996 by Israeli company Mirabilis, the platform was available for free, allowing users to message others as long as they had their user identification number.
Besides having a searchable user directory where people could look up their friends, ICQ also pioneered the ubiquitous status icon that people have come to rely on when checking if others are online.
In ICQ’s case, it was a daisy that would transform depending on one’s availability to chat - something that Mr Jerry Michalski, the president of an American technology consulting firm, foretold as “going to become a common visual vocabulary” in a 1999 interview with Forbes.
Its success eventually led to AOL acquiring Mirabilis on June 8, 1998, for a total sum of US$407 million (S$550 million). At its peak in 2001, ICQ had more than 100 million registered users.
Over the years, its user base declined, and ICQ would then be sold to Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies, now known as VK.
Under its new leadership, it shifted away from being a desktop platform, and was repurposed into a mobile messaging system, functioning exactly like WhatsApp or Telegram, with users allowed to set up groups and make video calls.
But VK is going to stop supporting it completely.
On the ICQ website, users are told that they can chat with friends through VK Messenger, or with colleagues through VK WorkSpace.
As for ICQ itself, only seven words were dedicated to announce its demise: “ICQ will stop working from June 26.”
