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I seem to recall ICQ's popularity already being in free-fall by 2000. My guess would be that as former AOL users switched to local ISPs, they would download the familiar AIM instead of ICQ. Most of my ICQ friends were internet friends; everyone at school used AIM.

EDIT: according to Wikipedia, ICQ peaked in 2001.

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At some point ICQ made some really bad development decisions and people avoided the new versions like the plague.

I can't remember which version in particular was in demand, but I do remember lots of sites specifically serving up the installers of the old versions.

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