RIP ICQ: Remembering a basic messaging app that was method forward of its time

Enlarge / ICQ in Home windows 98. (credit score: Samuel Axon)

After almost 28 years in operation, messaging service ICQ will stop operations on June 26, in keeping with its present house owners.

You would be forgiven for not realizing it nonetheless existed; the proto-IM service hasn’t been within the mainstream for the reason that 2000s. However within the late 1990s and early 2000s, it concurrently laid the groundwork for direct messaging and social networking as we got here to comprehend it within the post-Fb period.

28 years of historical past

ICQ was one thing of an accident, as common because it grew to become. Created by 4 Israeli pc geeks, it wasn’t even meant to be the unique concept.