
Well, it’s still there, but easier, faster and more convenient. Remember that cool feature − finding a new friend on the other side of the Earth? You just had to enter a few parameters in an ICQ search. You can edit the chat’s name, change its background and send pictures, videos, and any other documents to all of the participants at once. To organize one, you only need to select a few users or add them to an existing dialogue.

You can invite all your friends into an ICQ group chat. If you’re interested in reconnecting with old contacts or want to discover it for the first time, ICQ is available to download for Windows and Mac as well as Android and iOS mobile devices.

Sure, it’s not nearly as popular as it once was but it’s still around and that’s more than most of its early competitors can say. Incredibly enough, ICQ has also outlasted its chief competitors. AIM shut down last December, Yahoo’s communications program bit the bullet in mid-2018 and Microsoft laid its Messenger client to rest in 2014.Īccording to, the instant messaging platform is used by 11 million people worldwide each month. Launched after less than two months of development from Israeli company Mirabilis, it predated and influenced many of the popular chat programs of the era including AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, and MSN Messenger. Microsoft’s trailblazing Windows 95 was barely a year old, Nintendo had just introduced the N64, and those with a reason to have a cell phone actually used it to talk on.

ICQ, short for the phrase “I Seek You,” laid the groundwork for standalone instant messaging clients when it arrived in November 1996.
