Although WhatsApp is the most used messaging app in Spain, that doesn’t mean it was the first to succeed; Before the advent of smartphones, there were many services that served a similar function and inspired WhatsApp, Telegram and other social applications.
One of the most popular programs for communicating with friends, family or playmates was ICQ; This IRC competitor was one of the first to implement features that are basic today, such as creating a specific account for each user or a centralized service to which all users connected.
Originally launched in 1996 by Israeli developer Mirabilis, ICQ quickly gained popularity: it could be shared on web pages or directly between friends using floppy disks or diskettes. Its popularity skyrocketed when internet giant AOL acquired it in 1998 and spread to more communities and countries. At times, ICQ was the most important product of AOL, a company that was synonymous with the Internet in the United States. reaching 100 million users in 2001.
Before the advent of ICQ, messaging services such as IRC only allowed for the creation of groups in which members could choose their own name; but that identity was limited to that group and as long as the user was connected. There was no guarantee that a user with the same name in another group was the same person; in those times, anonymity was normal on the Internetso it wasn’t a big deal, but it started happening when the internet became popular and people started looking for their family and friends to talk to.
ICQ assigned a unique identification number to each person who signed up for the service; number that was always the same no matter what chat he was in, so participating in multiple communities with the same people was easier (maintaining anonymity). When WhatsApp launched in 2009, it was based on a very similar concept; But instead of assigning a number to each person, WhatsApp used the phone number as an identifier, simplifying things and replacing SMS.
ICQ now has an app for Android
But even before WhatsApp appeared, the future of ICQ was already in question. Alternatives based on the same concept are like MSN Messenger, were more complete and had more social functions. But ICQ was still more popular in some countries, such as Russia, so it is not surprising that in 2010 it was sold to the Russian company VK, which continues to support it to this day.
Now VK has announced the closure of ICQ; This isn’t surprising since the app hasn’t received an update in over a year, but it’s still an important moment in Internet history. ICQ will stop working on June 26, 28 years after its initial launch, and both desktop and Android apps will no longer be able to connect to send messages. VKontakte recommended that the remaining ICQ users switch to other applications developed by the company, such as VK Messenger for regular messaging and VK WorkSpace for business.