First instant messenger
No more “Oh-Oh!”: ICQ is shut down after 27 years
The characteristic ICQ flower logo
© stern/rös / Picture Alliance
Today, ICQ is a term mainly known to Internet nostalgics. At the end of the 1990s, the messenger with the flower logo and the catchy signal tone revolutionized the online world to some extent. Now it’s finally over, ICQ is being shut down after 27 years.
ICQ is a piece of internet history: Anyone who was online around the turn of the millennium will probably remember the unmistakable signal tone forever: a short “Oh-oh!” that announces the arrival of a new message. Long before Whatsapp, Signal, Discord and Co., ICQ had its heyday on the internet – the application with the simply drawn flower logo was probably the very first instant messenger ever.
Because the first DSL flat rates were introduced around the same time, millions of users spent entire evenings using ICQ. The service was revolutionary at a time when communication on the Internet was still mainly via email, forums and rather cumbersome chat portals: a small, easy-to-use program that allowed you to find and get to know people all over the world within seconds. “Everybody, everywhere” was the appropriate slogan at one point. Quite a few people also used ICQ as a dating app at the time.
ICQ will be closed at the end of June
ICQ was launched in 1996 by the Israeli company Mirabilis. The name alludes to the phrase “I seek you”. The online pioneer AOL bought the service in 1998 for several hundred million dollars. Later, when the so-called Web 2.0 emerged with the first social media portals and even later, when smartphones and the accompanying instant messaging apps such as Whatsapp began their triumphant advance, ICQ sank increasingly into insignificance.
Many people will be surprised that the service is still active, but soon the “oh-oh” will be over. The ICQ messenger will no longer work from June 26, the current operators announced on the service’s website, according to the German Press Agency. In 2010, the service was taken over by the Russian operator of the local Facebook clone VK. After ICQ’s demise, users on the website are recommended to use the chat service VK Messenger as an alternative.
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