Instant Messenger "ICQ" celebrates 20th anniversary

ByTatiana Bolshakova

Instant messenger of the former year who informed me "Ao!" With a shrill voice when receiving a messageICQ"Celebrated its 20th anniversary.

ICQ with video calls, free messages and low-cost phone calls
https://icq.com/windows/en


Happy 20th birthday, ICQ! | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2016/11/15/happy-20th-birthday-icq/

ICQ: 20 Years Is No Limit! - Medium
https://medium.com/@Dimitryophoto/icq-20-years-is-no-limit-8734e1eea8ea


Speaking of chat software 20 years agoIRCAlthough IRC was not familiar to users of non UNIX operating systems such as Windows, Israeli company Mirabilis called Mirabilis released ICQ free on November 15, 1996 and it is popular I did it. As of the end of 1997, the cumulative number of users was 5 million and the number of simultaneous online users was more than 300,000.

If you are touched the Internet at the end of the 1990's, you might feel this message new arrival sound nostalgic.

I tried sounding ICQ message new sound (AOU) with 'ICQ Soundboard' - YouTube


In 1998 the number of users increased to one million people in three weeks. And on June 7, 1998, Mirabilis was bought by AOL for $ 407 million (about 66 billion yen at the time) (total stock purchased for $ 287 million + additional 120 million Dollar). After that, in 2001 the number of users exceeded 100 million people. In 2002 AOL acquired a patent for instant messenger developed by Mirabilis.

It was ICQ that eventually reached growth under Orey Gilliam and became "most profitable subsidiary", but also became "one of AOL's most successful businesses", but from 2007 to 2010 Over the years it has been completely converted to "AOL abandoned project". The managing director has been changed from Mr. Orey Gilliam to Eliav Moshe and in April 2010 AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies for $ 187.5 million (approximately 17.4 billion yen at that rate) .

In September 2010, Digital Sky Technologies changed the company name to "Mail.ru" and announced a policy to develop ICQ as a mobile messaging system rather than a desktop client. This policy is successful, and in 2013 half of the users are mobile application users, and in 2014 the number of users began to increase for the first time since the acquisition.

While there are many software that will not be updated before the 20th anniversary, I did not think that ICQ will survive even in 2016. From where onwards, where will you head?