End of ICQ is announced after 28 years on air

"uh-oh". If you were an internet user between the years 90 e 2000, you must remember this sound with some nostalgia. O ICQ, a precursor to instant messaging, remained active (although with few users) until now after comings and goings. However, this week the end of the ICQ.

Yes, the application that revolutionized the way we communicate in real time over the internet will be deactivated on the day June 26, in approximately 1 month. The news came through VK, current owner of the service. In this text, we will remember a little about the history of ICQ, moments of rise and popularity and understand what led to the end of one of the main instant messaging platforms of the 2000s.

Origin and release

O ICQ was officially released in November 1996 by the Israeli company mirabilis, founded by young entrepreneurs Yair Goldfinger, Arik Vardi, Sefi Vigiser e Amnon Amir. They developed ICQ with the aim of creating a instant messages revolutionary technology that allowed users to communicate quickly and efficiently over the internet.

Initially released for the Windows operating system, the ICQ It marked a time of significant change in the way people communicated online. With its simple and intuitive interface, the messaging program has become a popular tool among users.

The name "ICQ” is an acronym based on the pronunciation of the English letters forming the phrase “I Seek You“, which if translated is “Eu Te Procuro” in Portuguese. This choice of name reflected the purpose of the program, which was to allow users to find and communicate instantly, regardless of the physical distance between them.

Growth and popularity in the 90s and 2000s

In the 90s and 2000s, the ICQ has undergone explosive growth, and this is due to its technological innovations at the time. One year after its creation, in 1997, the program already had 1 million of users and continued to grow an average of 100 thousand new users per week. In 1998, he surpassed the 20 million of users and, in 2001, the service reached the incredible mark of 100 million of users around the world.

In addition to being one of the first platforms to offer instant messaging in an accessible way, the ICQ It had a simple and intuitive interface that anyone, even with little experience with technology at the time, could use. Other factors, such as the limited competition at the time, helped ICQ to consolidate itself in the market. The success of the software was so great that it evolved from a desktop-only version into a messaging application compatible with multiple platforms, including iOS, Android e Linux.

Innovations introduced by ICQ 

ICQ introduced a series of innovative features that revolutionized online communication at the time. Among these resources were

• Instant messages, which allowed users to exchange text messages in real time;
• File Sharing, which made it possible to send and receive files directly through the platform;
• Voice calls (VOIP), which allowed users to chat via voice over the internet;
• Chat Rooms, where groups of users could interact in real time on different topics.

However, its highlight was in the UIN, a number assigned to users, which was used to identify and locate individuals on the network, facilitating connections between people on the platform. All you had to do was provide a user's UIN to add them to your contact list and start a conversation.

Decline and competitors

Since its launch, the ICQ was a pioneer in the field of instant messaging and played a key role in popularizing this form of digital communication. However, with the popularization of new platforms, such as MSN Messenger (which became Windows Live Messenger and was replaced by Skype or Whatsapp), ICQ slowly began to lose its place among the public's favorites. In 1998, the tool was sold to the company AOL and in 2010, with the advancement of other tools such as WhatsApp, ICQ was sold once again, this time to DigitalSky Technologies, the company that owned the VK, a Russian social network.

In 2016, the application even got some updates that made it similar to Web WhatsApp. However, as ICQ's biggest competitors are currently messaging apps like WhatsApp e Telegram, it would be a difficult task to wait for users to migrate again from such popular and established apps, even with all their changes. Additionally, many countries, such as Russia and China, have their own messaging platforms, such as WeChat in China and the VK in Russia.

The end of ICQ

After almost 28 years since its launch in 1996 and after going through three different owners, VK announced on May 26, on the official ICQ website, that the platform will stop working from June 26. Additionally, they asked their users to migrate to other chat apps.

The end of the ICQ can be attributed to the current scenario of online communication, where the WhatsApp and other mobile platforms gain prominence, while social networks such as Facebook e X play a central role in connecting people.

Despite the closure of the platform, the ICQ leaves a legacy, as does its influence on users during the early days of social networks in the 90s and 2000s. In its glory years, it managed to persist in a certain way, surpassing services offered by the MSN, AOL, Yahoo and even websites like MySpace, Orkut e Google. His contribution to the popularization of instant communication and the introduction of features that influenced other messaging platforms are an important milestone in the history of the internet.

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Source: ICQ

reviewed by Glaucon Vital in 27 / 5 / 24.