ICQ was developed by Mirabilis, an Israeli company,  which is now owned by the AOL subsidiary of Time Warner. ICQ’s very first version came out in November 1996, making it the first Internet instant messaging service. ICQ, for those who do not know, is an initialism of “I seek you.”

ICQ has a lot of features to boot like text messaging, offline support, multi-user enabled chats, free SMS sending (with limits), continuous file transfers, multiplayer games, greeting cards and user directory. ICQ is compatible with Windows, Macintosh and even with mobile phones. Its latest version, the 6.0.6043, was released in January of this year.