In 1996, many people called the Internet AOL, because most people in the early days of the World Wide Web thought the colorful platform was the Internet. Germany becomes European soccer champion, Take That leaves the show stage and ICQ conquers the world. Wait, ICQ? The name ICQ stands for the sentence “I seek you” and is the first commercially successful messenger in the world. ICQ was developed by four students from Israel. ICQ introduces a new form of communication into people’s lives: chatting.
To explain: Up until the 1990s, young people made appointments in person or over the phone. Thanks to ICQ, this can now also be done by computer. Access is extremely easy: install the free ICQ software, enter the relevant data and off you go. Every user receives a unique ICQ number, initially six digits, later eight digits and a valuable asset. Since mobile phones are not yet universally available, young people have exchanged ICQ numbers.
ICQ is developing rapidly. Suddenly, thanks to Messenger, it’s possible to write or chat, as it’s now called, with people all over the world, and all of this in real time. Now young people sit in front of their computers and wait for their friends. When does the red flower change to green? That means a friend just went online.
Going online is expensive
Going online was expensive back then. Flat rates or the like did not exist in this form. The online time runs over the normal telephone bill. That is why it is often higher in the 1990s, in the early years of the Internet. Today, when we are all constantly online, we can hardly imagine the situation at that time. When a friend’s status on ICQ changes from red to green, this leads to a huge emotional explosion on the other side of the computer.
With chatting, another topic is also being introduced. social pressure. We probably have ICQ to thank for that, too. Because if a friend went online and didn’t reply to your own message within a certain period of time, this later – in a personal meeting – was cause for discussion. “Why didn’t you answer? You were online after all.” These conversations still exist in one form or another to this day. Unfortunately.
Of course, the success of ICQ also makes other companies sit up and take notice. At that time, more than 100 million people used the messenger worldwide, a huge number at that time and the partially still low spread of the Internet. That’s why the successful provider of Internet access, AOL, decided in 1998 to buy the service for a whopping 407 million US dollars.
The boom will continue for a while. AOL itself is tinkering with its own messenger services, just like Microsoft is now doing. Other service providers are now also recognizing the potential of real-time chat. But only a short time later the world changes.
Technology change is supplanting ICQ
So far, people have dialed into the Internet via modem. At the end of the 1990s, a new dial-up option appeared: the broadband network. This also establishes the first flat rate offers. As a result, more and more people are showing up online, albeit no longer through AOL, who didn’t catch the technological trend in time. With that, ICQ’s star slowly begins to decline.
Facebook in particular ended the golden age of ICQ with its own messenger from the mid-2000s. The former messenger giant is suddenly just one of many and at some point just isn’t cool enough anymore. Maybe a first foretaste of what we experience again and again on the Internet, only much faster: Today the big thing and tomorrow already forgotten.
At the latest with the advent of WhatsApp, the last ICQ fans have also changed channels. ICQ has never managed to do what WhatsApp has done: to replace SMS. Nevertheless, the messenger with the green flower was a kind of early WhatsApp. Only the limited technical possibilities have prevented a greater triumph.
ICQ New – (almost) everything new
ICQ was sold to a Russian investment company in 2010. The deal brings AOL only 187.5 million US dollars. At that time, the number of ICQ users was around 42 million and then dropped further to almost 10 million. The current version of the messenger dates back to 2016.
ICQ is still alive though. When there were heated discussions about the changed data protection guidelines at WhatsApp and many users turned their backs on the popular messenger service, even ICQ occasionally appeared as an alternative. So the older Internet users have at least noticed that ICQ still exists.
Want to try it? The messenger has a new name and is called ICQ New. And don’t worry: you no longer have to remember a long number. ICQ now works like any other messenger, with group and video chats and file transfers.