AOL sell ICQ to DST (Russia) | Hacker News Reader

AOL sell ICQ to DST (Russia)

dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com

27 pointsUncle_Sam27 comments

Still run ICQ+Pidgin+OTR daily. And while I don't have the coveted 6 digit ICQ UIN I got a 7 digit so that makes me old.

I wonder if this will increase or decrease the amount of Russian spam I receive through the service. I know some who get bombarded daily.

ICQ/OSCAR protocol is totally insecure in essence, any attempt to fight spam on ICQ network is futile. It's kind of same as with email/SMTP.

I still have one but I never actually log in - got the 6 digit even (#924218). I didn't realize it was an active, viable service still. At least at a level of independent value that makes it worth selling off.

I'm #575061. We are the ones in the first million, huh!

It's impressive how quickly a company can lose such an impressive market share.

Yup - it was pervasive when I first used it. It was an amazing way to tie in people from diff. online communities with whom I'd otherwise have much less interaction.

At one point I recall them moving ICQ To the Oscar (early AIM) protocol but it was dying by then, replaced with the other 800000 IM systems available.

I have a 6-digit UIN, and I get bombarded daily with russian spam.

Then again, I almost never talk to someone over ICQ so I could just shut it down, but then again I'm running Miranda so one more protocol doesn't bother me much.

I too have a 6 digit UID as well - We need some sort of automated whitelisting b/c the spam is just idiotic.

Tip: Setting Falkland Islands as my location and clearing age and gender helped me get about 95% less spam in Skype. (On ICQ the decrease in spam was noticable, but not so big).

Since from what I can tell, the biggest user group of the ICQ service is Russian hackers, the sale is only logical.

Why hackers? Just Russians. ICQ is very popular in Russia for whatever historical reason.

There's a great and unstoppable tendency in Russia to switch to Jabber, so I wonder why would someone want to invest huge pile of money into almost dead service based on a centuary old technology? Either investors are dumb or there's some grassroot movement involved.

I knew ICQ was old, but century old technology? Unless it started out as a telegraph service I think you're confused.

I think he/she was exaggerating.

I'd guess the latter as DST doesn't seem to be dumb. They are heavily invested in Facebook, Zynga, Groupon and others. DST investors include Goldman Sachs and Tencent. They have been doing a lot of deals lately partly because they offer cash and will purchase employee stock. Both are nice when IPOs are so rare.

There's a great and unstoppable tendency in Russia to switch to Jabber

Are you use you're not talking about geeks having an unstoppable tendency in Russia to switch to Jabber? Isn't the second most popular IM Mail.ru Agent, which is also owned by DST?

Everyone I know uses ICQ. (I’m in Germany.) They might also use Skype but that is by no means a given. It’s a truly dreadful situation. I wish it were different but it isn’t.

Uh, really? NOBODY I know in Russia/former Soviet Union uses Jabber. Everybody uses ICQ and some use Skype.

Ya, really. I'm in Russia, I'm on jabber since forever, ditched ICQ completely 2 or 3 years ago -- I just don't need it anymore, almost everybody I know is on jabber already.

(admittedly, quitting Skype is noticeably harder).

It may be unstoppable in the long run but it's far from prevailing. ICQ is in no danger of extinction in the coming 5-7 years for sure, especially with parters like Yandex and Rambler. And, well, network effects, you know. Most normal* web-connected people use it in Russia, as you know.

* normal means not IT people

I think this title should win an award for most three letter acronyms in an HN title. :-)

TLA is our DNA.

AOL -> ICQ -> AIM/Yahoo -> Gaim -> Pidgin

It's amazing how little things have changed on the instant messenger side since I started using AIM.

I will forever associate ICQ with that silly Uh Oh! sound when you received a message.

Oh, it is a true Russian way of investment - we have money, everything else does not matter.

AOL should be very happy (and surprised) to get rid of that old crap.

It's not crap. It's the most popular IM service in Russia and a whole bunch of other countries. I use it daily to talk to friends and business colleagues in Europe, and ICQ is the only service they use (although more technologically-oriented use Skype)

When a lot of people are using something it does not prove that it is not a crap.

PHP is the best example. =)

Investors are not benevolent technology incubators. They need returns on their money, and the quality of the software side of ICQ is largerly irrelevant here.

Returns on ICQ? Did they even requested the data about how many users signs in and number of messages per day for resent 5 years? =)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com