ICQ messenger shuts down after almost 28 years
ICQ messenger shuts down after almost 28 years
The ICQ messaging app is shutting down on June 26th, marking the end of a much-beloved communication application.
Yahoo! Messenger shut down in 2018
MSN Messenger discontinued in 2013
AIM Messenger discontinued in 2017ICQ was really the last of them and it's ending quite an era. This is, officially, the end of the Messengers.
Damn, thinking about the msn messenger brings me back to such simpler and happier times
nudge
I can almost breath the same as young me getting home, throwing my bag in my bed and jumping to the family PC in the living room to chat with friends. Man, I never thought I'd miss the 00's. Why'd I wanna grow up?
Msn was the best, I'll never forgive Microsoft for killing it in favour of Skype.
WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Signal, etc. It's hardly the end, the market has just been gobbled up by the big players as usual
Aol instant messenger messenger
I must have used all of them over the years. Can't remember why, they were all pretty much the same.
Does slack count?
OG instant messenger 🫡 survived long enough.
Damn, it was still running? Not that I still remember my username or password, but damn...
I'm not sure if it ever changed but usernames used to be numbers.
Mine started with a 3 and was 8 digits long
TIL ICQ was still going.
Same here. LOL!
We three!
It's a great place to get ebooks.
I can still hear that uh oh
Damn i still say that like that sometimes, and i totally forgot where it came from
That typewriter sound effect for every key you hit was so satisfying
Ok but only because of that prozzac song lol
I remember when they first introduced the live chat feature.
You could literally watch the other person type something out, erase their mistakes and correct it in real time.
That shit blew my mind as a kid.
RIP one of the most enjoyable messengers I ever used 🫡
Rip. You were always better than msm message.
I really liked the design of the underlying protocol (OSCAR, also used by AIM). It was a lot of fun to implement in a 3rd party client and I learned so much about networking and application protocols from the experience. It contributed immensely my career path.
It was my first introduction to the type-length-value concept over the network, seemed radically different from the text only IRC protocol that I knew back then. I remember how fun it was to write an elegant parser for the ICQ messaging, and how I ended up on somewhat a DOM model where I converted the on-wire format into series of nested objects. Not the most efficient idea, but it was neat.
RIP ICQ, you were a real one
My icq# was 4706179 and I doubt I'll ever forget it.
1132418 here!
2576568 signing out
Someone with a lower UIN than mine, 1803929. Guess I should have created my account when I found out about it a year earlier. :)
Nice job doxing yourself idiot /s
31299966 man, I didn’t realize it was still running. The live text chat was the best.
I forgot mine years ago. :(
11909704 it's been probably 25 to 30 years since I've used it, and still remember
4382561 signing out.
15189530, seared into my brain like my childhood phone number.
216617624,sadly hasn't worked with the relaunch
Permanently Deleted
Nooooooo. I can't remember my ICQ, maybe I still have it somewhere, but this is still sad.
At least IRC is still going.
Edit:
In its heyday, ICQ boasted over 100 million users on its platform, which was a remarkable achievement at the time. In 2010, ICQ was purchased by Mail.ru (now VK), who has since owned the products as it declined in use.
Today, ICQ announced that they are shutting down on June 26th, recommending that users switch to VK Messenger and Workspace.
So apparently Russian business killed it.
Considering how many other messengers died before ICQ I would say Russian VK kept it alive...
The king has died, long live the shit we have now?
Out of everything we have today, Discord is arguably the best we've got.
Nobody cares about Skype anymore as much. VK Messenger, which is ICQ's successor, looks like trash. Telegram used to be very great but did take some morally questionable steps, yet still gives the user an awful lot of power. Zoom is garbage. Microsoft Teams is garbage. Facebook Messenger is garbage.
So if I had to pick, Discord and Telegram is the best we've got now.
You mean MSN messenger doesn't exist anymore?!?
I have some good news for you: https://escargot.chat/
Holy shit,I didn't even know it was still available
Man, those were the days...
Back in like 2006, I’ve made an account for myself. A bot added me, asked how big my dick is, and then I’ve never used it again
Check your DMs
- About a decade ago I tried so hard to sign in but couldn’t guess my password and didn’t have access to my original email. Nothing is permanent…
It’s been part of VKontakte since 2010. Good riddance I guess.
Loved it back in the day.
Uh oh!
167532282 :-) good times
fudge
I seek you. so clever...
I assume today it is more a compete OS with games, browser, officer suite, video editing, ... than just a messenger? It sure would be if I extrapolate my experience from back in the day.
Nah, the latest iteration was a Telegram clone
4066872
19699113
My UIN is still etched into my memory. 1803929.
114466390