spxans

Yes, that is part of the definition of a hostile takeover:

"hostile takeover n. An acquisition of a firm despite resistance by the target firm's management and board of directors"

it's an appropriate label considering the founder was openly against it and had to leave the country

Mail.ru Group is controlled by Alisher Usmanov, an oligarch from the 90s and an old friend of Putin. Few years back Mail.ru group with the help of russian secret services staged a hostile takeover of VK, biggest social network in russia, essentially forcing the founder to leave the country. Since then VK data has been freely available to any russian enforcement agency, or even anyone pretending to be one. In russia there isn't even a pretense of privacy/independence from them, everyone knows FSB&Friends have unrestricted access to their stuff

Telegram is banned in Russia and this new ICQ is being launched by a russian company with strong ties to the russian government, so it could be their attempt at replacing somewhat private telegram with something they can openly monitor

It's owned by Alisher Usmanov (Putin's oligarch friend), all their other products (VK, Odnoklassniki) send all the data straight to the russian secret services, of course there isn't and won't ever be any encryption

Some more context: DST was renamed to Mail.Ru Group, and is now owned by one of the russian oligarchs (Alisher Usmanov). They also control all the largest russian social networks (some like VK through hostile takeovers) and is widely reported to pipe all the data directly into russian secret services

No mention of any sort of chat encryption either. As with all the Mail.Ru Group's other services (VK, Odnoklassniki) it is widely understood that the russian secret services have essentially unrestricted access to everything happening on them, so be advised

For those not aware, ICQ is owned by Mail.Ru Group controlled by Alisher Usmanov, one of Putin's oligarch friends