Tech Desk 
Jun 27, 2024
The ICQ internet messaging service was developed by Israeli programmers, ICQ soon gained much fame and was sold to AOL in 1998. At its peak in 2001, it had more than 100 million registered users and 2.5 million daily active users.
After airing its longest period of 28 years, this internet messaging service is shutting down. ICQ was born back in 1996 and was a revolutionary platform credited with providing people at that time the innovation of real-time text chat.
ICQ was hugely successful due to its innovative real-time text chat capabilities that connected users instantly. The simplicity of using the application added to a user-friendly interface, alongside several revolutionary features including user profiles, chat rooms, and file transfer, made the application a success among its users.
Read more: Strava anounces Dark Mode and AI-powered features
It introduced instant messaging, which has since become one of the standard features of most of the messaging platforms that followed. ICQ also provided user profiles, by which users could share information about themselves with other people.
Despite efforts to modernize, ICQ faced stiff competition from emerging messaging services like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Facebook Messenger. The platform's user base declined over the years, and it was eventually acquired by VKontakte (VK), a Russian company often referred to as "Russia's Facebook." VK attempted to revive ICQ but ultimately decided to discontinue its operations.
