ICQ is an Instant Messenger that was first released in 1996 by Mirabilis which was later acquired by the America Online corporation. ICQ is currently owned by Digital Sky Technologies.
ICQ was innovative for its time, with a number of features and capabilities that weren’t available anywhere else. It allowed for offline messaging, free SMS messaging, multiplayer gaming capabilities, emoticons, file transfer and more. You could even use the ICQ program to send greeting cards to friends on their birthdays, Christmas or during any other holiday or celebration.
ICQ was hugely popular and at the height of its popularity it had over one hundred million registered users, with more regular chatters than many of its competitors. ICQ released a number of different services, including ICQ TV (an online video site aimed towards teenagers) ICQ2Go (a web Instant messenger that was aimed at those who couldn’t or wouldn’t download the ICQ program) ICQ Game Center (a gaming center that included a number of games users could play with people on their friends list). In 2010 ICQ also released a beta version for the Mac Operating System, which could also be used on the Linux Operating System.
