Venerable ICQ messaging service to end operations in June
- Reference: 1716809410
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/05/27/icq_end_of_service/
- Source link:
A brief statement on the service's website states "ICQ will stop working from June 26" without any explanation, and suggests VK Messenger as an alternative.
More on that potential successor after we revisit ICQ's history, which starts in 1996 when Israeli outfit Mirabilis developed the tool.
[1]
Instant messaging (IM) was reasonably popular at the time, but early tools like Internet Relay Chat weren't easy to understand or adopt for the hordes of folks coming online with Windows 95 and Netscape.
[2]
[3]
ICQ was more accessible, and quickly accumulated over ten million users.
In 1997 America Online (AOL) – the dialup ISP/portal that dominated the internet at the time – saw text-based chatting as a valuable service for its members so created AOL Instant Messenger (AIM).
[4]
In 1998 it acquired Mirabilis to get its hands on ICQ. [5]Reports of the acquisition from the time quoted AOL CEO Bob Pittman as saying "Acquiring ICQ fits perfectly into our multiple-brand strategy."
"Like CompuServe, ICQ substantially broadens our reach in important markets not served by AOL-branded products. In addition to its international reach, ICQ has tremendous appeal among young, technically sophisticated web users and there is remarkably little overlap with AOL."
The messaging market soon heated up, as Yahoo ! and Microsoft created their own competitors. AOL fought bitter wars with its rivals over interoperability, which is why in 1999 The Register carried an [6]open letter from the boss of rival portal Excite in which he argued for messaging to be made open.
[7]
ICQ continued to operate independently of AOL and – despite some [8]difficulties with unsavory users – reached 100 million users.
But as AOL waned with the end of the dialup age, competing products emerged, and ICQ's popularity declined.
[9]AOL IM and ICQ to interoperate, at last
[10]Slack tweaks its principles in response to user outrage at AI slurping
[11]Shouldn't Teams, Zoom, Slack all interoperate securely for the Feds? Wyden is asking
[12]Can the AOL-Netscape deal be made to work?
By 2010 AOL decided to offload the service – a task made difficult by its [13]reputation for having many criminals as members and for the prospective buyer being Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies. US authorities worried that the sale would make it harder to investigate ICQ users.
But the deal went ahead, and Digital Sky eventually adopted the name VK.
Which brings us back to VK Messenger, the suggested alternative to ICQ.
It's not much of an alternative, actually. VK's apps were [14]booted from app stores run by Google and Apple in 2022.
Which leaves ICQ users outside Russia without an alternative that shares any of ICQ's lineage, and a thread of internet history at an end – even as countless IM threads are created daily using Google Chat, Slack, Teams, WhatsApp, Zoom Team Chat, WebEx, Alibaba DingTalk, Tencent WeCom, iMessage, and messaging services bolted to just about every social network. ®
Get our [15]Tech Resources
[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZlSuHfRDlZcGfHvZCosWXwAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZlSuHfRDlZcGfHvZCosWXwAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZlSuHfRDlZcGfHvZCosWXwAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZlSuHfRDlZcGfHvZCosWXwAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/aol-acquires-instant-message-firm/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/1999/07/30/open_letter_to_aol_about/
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/columnists&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZlSuHfRDlZcGfHvZCosWXwAAAAw&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/1999/08/15/icq_users_slammed_in_priest/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2002/10/30/aol_im_and_icq/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/20/slack_ts_and_cs_update/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/24/wyden_government_interoperability/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/1998/12/01/can_the_aolnetscape_deal/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/16/aol_icq_fears/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/28/vk_removed_from_apple_app_store/
[15] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
I laughed at "Wall (bathroom)".
I smiled at this, then remembered to translate "bathroom" to "toilet", then I laughed ;)
Wall (Unix) will mystify some.
ICQ has announced it will shut down for good in June
Uh-oh!
A problem with "standardized" chat protocols is that they completely kill innovation. XMPP and IRC are utterly decrepit by today's standards, and their clients don't even support embedding any sort of media whatsoever, and even if you do use a client that does that, your friends most likely aren't, so there's an awkward social disconnect there. Even the Matrix protocol, while pretending to be Discord, only has barely half the features of the protocol it's attempting to mimic, like they weren't even trying. Discord breaks it's API a lot, and it's annoying, but they also add new features and really make the chatting experience more fulfilling. It's no wonder there's so many independent projects trying to copy Discord's client and API nearly 1:1.
I'm not saying we shouldn't have an open standard for chatting, but right now, nobody but these corporations seem to give even half a flying flop about actually making a decent, featureful client and API. The best ones right now are the aforementioned Discord clones, like Revolt (which my friends and I are considering moving to).
That is a good thing. "Innovation" is just a synonym for enshittification. Computers were useful and fast enough before 2000. Pretty much every "innovation" since then has been to make them harder to use, and lock down resources, for money extraction purposes.
Oh, that and stupid bling.
Meh, I think the chat protocols themselves have hardly changed since IRC was introduced. Okay, media support has been added but that was also possible using DCC.
What has changed is hosting and transport protocols to handle encryption and most of this is necessary to prevent third parties gaining access not only to what's being said, but more importantly who's talking to whom and this makes interoperability more difficult because of the PKI infrastructure used.
Hold up there, Poettering. You can hide your name, but not your intentions.
Really?
I thought it was gone years ago. We've used a few since then and now Viber is preferred.
Trillian
IRQ is a blast from the past indeed! I remember using an app called Trillian to manage my various IMs. With the Geiger skin.
These days it's all private mentions on Mastodon or TwitteX for me.
Re: Trillian
This thread feels like it needs interrupting.
Re: Trillian
Hey, Zaphod, come over here!
Uh oh!
Fondly remembered.
Obligatory [1]XKCD
[1] https://xkcd.com/1810/