This pioneering instant messaging platform tried to keep up with the times - we take a closer look at why ICQ failed

Instant messaging platforms are a dime a dozen in 2025 - from WhatsApp and Signal to Telegram or Facebook Messenger, there’s certainly no shortage of options for users today.

It wasn’t always that way, however, and in the mid 1990s ICQ was among the first pioneering offerings around, racking up a significant global user base and courting offers from major companies.

ICQ was created by Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, first launching as a free-to-download web application. It was by no means the first real-time messaging platform available on the early web. Indeed, it faced stiff competition from the likes of the Internet Relay Chat (IRC) platform.

What set ICQ apart, however, was that it basically offered a fully centralized service for users to engage in one-on-one conversations. It really laid the groundwork for later messaging services.

It’s safe to say that ICQ really took off. Users flocked to it during the early days despite its lack of substantial marketing efforts on the part of Mirabilis. At its peak in 2001, ICQ boasted more than 100 million registered users.

Courting offers

Of course, a key factor behind its monumental user base in 2001 was the fact it was operating under the AOL umbrella.

The online service provider acquired Mirabilis in June 1998 for an initial fee of $287 million, with the potential for an additional $120 million in scattered payments based on the performance of the messaging app.

ICQ became one of AOL’s most successful acquisitions ever, and certainly ranked among one of its most profitable.

This success created problems, however. Other enterprises wanted a piece of the burgeoning instant messaging market, and more competitors began springing up.

AOL sold the company to Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies in 2010. It was an acquisition that made sense for both parties. ICQ’s influence was diminishing in western markets yet in Russia it remained highly popular.

At the time of the acquisition it still boasted around 42 million active daily users, a significant portion of which were Russian based. This period in the app’s history saw a major change in focus, switching from a largely web-based application to capitalizing on the mobile messaging boom of the 2010s.

This did pay dividends for a while, with ICQ once again experiencing an influx of users.

A long, slow demise

ICQ lingered on well into the 2020s despite a steadily decreasing user base and the surging popularity of other options out there on the market. A new version released in 2020 promised a sizable overhaul and some impressive features.

This included group chats that could hold up to 25 thousand users at the same time. Elsewhere, the introduction of private chats and the ability to start a conversation with yourself that acted as a bootstrapped type of cloud storage.

Despite the update, the service continued falling by the wayside. In May 2024, a message on ICQ’s website informed users it would be shutting down in due course, with the final end of life data arriving on June 26 that year.