It is always sad to see an internet landmark vanish from the world. This is exactly what is happening to ICQ, an instant messaging app that has been around for nearly three decades. The company behind the app has announced that it will be ending all services on June 26th (next month).
ICQ was initially released in November of 1996. It has since remained one of the original free instant messaging apps that gave users an alternative option for communication that didn’t require subscriptions or buying into other services.
Like most things, it was eventually gobbled up by another company. Just 2 years after its debut (1998), AOL came to acquire it for a whopping $407 million. A move like that made plenty of users nervous as AOL might have been looking to get rid of the competition so that there would be more reason to subscribe to its services in exchange for AIM (AOL Instant Messenger). At least that was the fear. But AOL didn’t and ICQ remained free (and so did AIM).
In 2010, VK (a Russian social network) purchased it from AOL for $187.5 million, making it a noticeable loss for AOL investment-wise, and moving ownership of ICQ to Russia. Where it continued to lose popularity for various reasons. VK likely made use of the app to help develop its own VK messenger, which it has been slowly moving toward the last few years. The end of ICQ could be predicted as VK removed ICQ from various app stores a few years back and there was no news about it being up for sale to anyone.
Now, visiting ICQ’s website reveals a notice stating that it will stop working as of June 26th (2024). Which means anyone who has it installed will have to remove it as it will no longer function. Servers will shut down and users will see the final push toward using VK messenger instead.
If you prefer not to use anything hosted in another country, there is always the option of switching to Facebook, Microsoft Teams, Google Chat, or another platform that is locally hosted and managed. There is also Trillian as well, which has been around for years. As well as various IRC solutions for those looking for open-source chat spaces (which, hopefully, will be around forever).
Sadly, a lot of the original instant messaging options have retired over the years. ICQ simply being the most recent to be added to that graveyard. One of the most recent closures that stung was AIM (AOL Instant Messenger), that closed its doors in 2017 after Verizon merged some of its (owned) brands into Verizon Media and discontinued some of the related products (AIM being one of them). Verizon had purchased AOL just a few years before that in 2015.
