Remember ICQ? After almost three decades, the once-popular instant messaging client is finally shutting down. On Friday, the ICQ website posted a simple message: “ICQ will stop working from June 26.” It now recommends users migrate to the messaging platforms from VK, the Russian social media company that acquired ICQ from AOL in 2010, but under a different corporate name. It’s an unceremonious end for a software program that helped kick off instant messaging on PCs in the 1990s. ICQ, which stands for “I Seek You,” was originally developed at an Israeli company called Mirabilis before AOL bought it in 1998 for $407 million.
(Credit: ICQ)
ICQ, which was released several months before AOL’s own instant messenger, had 100 million registered users in 2001. But over time, ICQ lost out to competing instant messengers and smartphone chat apps. In 2010, VK bought ICQ with the goal of revitalizing it since the instant messaging app had been quite popular in Russia. VK developed mobile versions of ICQ, which helped the client grow in 2014. But following several attempts to modernize the software, the app’s development has sputtered. Both the iOS and Android versions were retired from the App Store and Google Play, according to Techspot.
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VK didn’t respond to a request for comment. But the ICQ shutdown suggests the company would rather retire the app than continue spending money on it. VK operates a Facebook-like social media platform, along with VK Messenger, which has over 10 million downloads on Google Play. Still, the X/Twitter account for ICQ is teasing a comeback in some form.
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