ICQ, which was a very popular messaging app for a short time in the 1990s and early 2000s, has only a month to go before it joins other legacy apps and software in the big, great farm in the sky. It will stop working on June 26, according to her website, which also encourages users to move to VK Messenger for casual conversations and to VK WorkSpace for professional conversations. ICQ came into the picture at a time when most people were using IRC to chat. However, IRC was mostly intended for group chats – ICQ made it easy to communicate between two people.
Users who signed up for an account were assigned a number, which became longer over time, because it was issued sequentially. The shortest numbers were five digits, meaning the users who got them were there to begin with. ICQ peaked in the early 2000s when it reached 100 million registered accounts. Although it didn’t take long for AIM, Yahoo Messenger, and MSN Messenger to surpass in popularity, ICQ’s famous “uh-oh!” The sound of the notifications remains unforgettable for many Internet users during that era.
ICQ, derived from the phrase “I ask you”, was developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis. It was subsequently bought by AOL and then by the Russian company Mail.Ru Group, now known as VK, which has its own social media and messaging services.