ICQ: Instant Messenger is shut down after more than 27 years

“Oh oh” – that’s it! One of the most famous greeting sounds on the Internet is about to disappear: After more than 27 years, the messenger dinosaur ICQ is coming to an end!

On the service's website, the operators wrote: “ICQ will no longer work as of June 26th.” To be honest, we hadn't really thought about ICQ anymore anyway.

The Israeli company Mirabilis had the Instant Messenger Launched in 1996, it was a huge success in the early days of the Internet: More than 100 million people worldwide used ICQ and kept in touch with their friends using “I seek you”.

Two years after the launch, the then Internet-Provider AOL snapped up the messenger for 407 million dollars (today almost 375 million euros). But the popularity dwindled: In the following years, ICQ was overtaken by other offerings and gradually lost importance.

AOL ultimately made a loss: in 2010, ICQ was sold for just 187.5 million dollars (today around 173 million euros) to the Russian Mail.ru Group (now VK Group), which now also operates the Facebook clone VK.

Consequently, the still-ICQ operators pointed out their service: “With VK Messenger you can chat with your friends, with VK WorkSpace with your colleagues.”