On June 26, 2024, ICQ was officially shut down, ending an Internet era. Now, if you live in America, you probably have no idea what ICQ is. But you've heard of AOL Instant Messenger, right? AIM?

Sigh. How old is our audience? Anyway, back in the 1990s, as the Internet was getting off its feet, people wanted a way to communicate with each other without those pesky landline phones. (Those other pesky phones, of the mobile variety, were just getting off the ground.) So, a team of four Israeli computer scientists: Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser, Amnon Amir, and Arik Vardi (Goldfinger seems to be the ringleader, so he is headlining the profile) came up with ICQ (say it slowly... "I... seek... you"), a program that allowed people to communicate with each other in real time.

ICQ swept through much of the world, becoming the dominant online communication platform. In America, however, AIM became king. It all came to a clash in 1998, when America Online bought ICQ's parent company, Mirabilis, for $400 million.

ICQ and AIM co-existed for a while, but the days of dominance were dwindling. Slowly but surely, mobile phones started to take over, texting became king, and other services emerged. AOL sold off ICQ in 2010, and it lingered in a quasi-zombie state for a while until finally being killed off this year.

At least it lasted seven years longer than AIM!