In 2025, there will be many instant messaging platforms – from WhatsApp and Signal to Telegram or Facebook Messenger – and today there is certainly no shortage of options for users.
However, this was not always the case and by the mid-1990s ICQ was one of the first breakthrough offerings, creating a large global user base and attracting offers from major corporations.
It’s safe to say that ICQ has really succeeded. Although there was no significant marketing effort from Mirabilis, many users quickly turned to this product. At its peak in 2001, ICQ had more than 100 million registered users.
Promotional offers
A key factor in its huge user base in 2001 was, of course, the fact that the company operated under the AOL umbrella.
The online services provider acquired Mirabilis in June 1998 for an initial purchase price of US$287 million, with the option to receive an additional US$120 million in contingent payments based on the performance of the messaging application.
ICQ has become one of AOL’s most successful acquisitions and certainly one of its most profitable.
However, this success had problems. Other companies wanted to enter the emerging instant messaging market and more and more competitors appeared.
AOL sold the company to the Russian company Digital Sky Technologies in 2010. It was a logical takeover for both parties. ICQ’s influence in Western markets has waned, but it is still very popular in Russia.
At the time of the acquisition, the company still had approximately 42 million daily active users, a significant portion of which were based in Russia. This period in the app’s history saw a significant shift in focus from being a primarily web-based app to capitalizing on the mobile messaging boom of the 2010s.
This paid off for a while, as ICQ saw another influx of users.
A long slow disappearance
ICQ has survived the 2020s despite a steadily declining user base and the growing popularity of other alternatives on the market. A new version released in 2020 promised a major overhaul and impressive features.
This included group chats for up to 25,000 users at a time. Further, the introduction of private chats and the ability to start a conversation with yourself, which acted as a kind of bootable cloud storage.
Despite the update, the service remained abandoned. In May 2024, a notice on ICQ’s website informed users that the company would be shutting down in due course, with the closing date scheduled for June 26 of that year.