You also had digital freedom and autonomy. You controlled how many ICQ accounts you had. Setting one up took a minute and cost nothing.

You chose the client you used to connect with. Noobs used the official ICQ adware and you used some 1337 open source client on Linux that could handle both ICQ and Jabber. But you could talk to them on the same platform.

Where are the alternative WhatsApp clients? Or iMessage? Or Telegram? You can't talk to anyone anymore unless you submit to one of a few megacorps and run their software.