Back in 1998, no one could even think that the brainchild of one little-known Israeli company Mirabilis would make a real revolution in the world of electronic communication. If you have not guessed yet, then we are talking about the ICQ program. What is it, then no one had heard, and little was known about its capabilities. And today it’s hard to find a computer or smartphone on which its owner would not install this wonderful software.
Almost immediately after the announcement of the new Mirabilis server program, they “fell” several times a day, because the number of people who wanted to immediately install it on their computer was simply huge. Already in 2005, there were about 250 million people around the world with users of the official version of ICQ alone, and this does not take into account the numerous software clones! And all
this excitement passed around the small and modest ICQ utility. What is it and why is the whole world as if crazy?
We must start with the fact that the very idea of ​​the new "messenger" was simple to genius. The creators wrote an elementary application, during the installation of which each user was assigned a unique UIN (serial number) and login (if desired).
After completing the simple registration procedure, you could search for your friends, relatives and colleagues, even if they lived on the other side of the Earth. Please note that there were no social networks then, and therefore ICQ had to cope with everything. What is it for users of those times, not spoiled by the abundance of high-speed Internet?
It is no exaggeration to say that the program instantly became a hit of the season precisely because it allowed you to find the right person and instantly contact him. Of course, in those days, e-mail was widespread, but there was no search for people's addresses, and often registered users simply forgot about their mailboxes, checking them once a week, or even less. If you used ICQ (what it is, we already said), then your message got to the person at the very moment when he went online. Fantasy!
In subsequent years, developers worked tirelessly to improve their creations. A digression should be made here, saying that already in 1998 America-Online Corporation unmistakably felt the potential of Mirabilis, which was unknown at that time, having bought it “with giblets”. The capabilities of a large company allowed us to constantly develop software, so soon a program such as ICQ on the phone appeared.
Unfortunately, such a rapid development also had its “dark sides”. Trying to "milk" at least some money from ICQ users, AOL began to embed almost hundreds of ad units into its program code . Video conferencing, chat, and games have appeared, which at that time could not function normally due to the lack of a normal Internet connection. A massive outflow of users to competing programs has begun (and there have already been more than a dozen of them).
Seeing this, the creators of "ICQ" urgently made her "liposuction", removing a lot of unnecessary trash and greatly reducing the size of the installation package. Of course, you can only recall nostalgia about a couple of hundred kilobytes of the first version, but even ICQ for Android today differs in quite acceptable sizes of 7 MB.