ICQ officially closed after nearly 28 years of operation

A familiar messaging application from the past – ICQ – will officially stop working from June 26. Russian company VK, which has managed ICQ since 2010, posted a brief notice saying the service was shutting down and suggesting users switch to its other messaging apps.

ICQ is one of the first online messaging services, at the same time as AOL Instant Messenger or MSN Messenger. A special feature of ICQ is that users are given a series of numbers to connect with each other, instead of using a display name or email. ICQ also has unique features such as SMS texting or sending messages to people who are offline.

https://icq.com/desktop/en?#mac

Surely many longtime internet users still remember the sound “Uh oh!” signaling a new message from this app.

Launched in 1996 by Israeli company Mirabilis, ICQ was later acquired by AOL in 1998. By 2001, the number of ICQ registered users had reached 100 million, according to a release from Time Warner (the company that acquired AOL). In 2010, AOL sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies, the parent company of VK (then known as Mail.ru).

https://web.archive.org/web/20190510153236/http://www.timewarner.com/newsroom/press-releases/2001/05/09/icq-celebrates-100-million-registered-users

According to Internet Archive archives from March 2023, the interface and features of the app at that time seemed similar to modern messaging applications such as WhatsApp or Telegram. However, the ICQ application has now disappeared from both the App Store and Google Play Store, it is possible that this service has stopped working for a while and VK is just formalizing the information.