ICQ

ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, created by Mirabilis, an Israeli start-up company based in Tel-Aviv. The program was first released in November, 1996, and was the first instant messaging program which could be operated on non-UNIX/LINUX computers. The name ICQ is a play on the phrase "I seek you".

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ICQ allows the sending of text message with offline support, URLs, multi-user character-by-character chats, resumable file transfers, SMSes, greeting cards and more. Other features included a searchable user directory and POP3 email support. Even though such features were made available since around 2000, many of the main competitors such as AOL Instant Messenger, MSN Messenger and Yahoo! Messenger have failed to implement such power-user oriented features even to this day. Instead, they have gone towards the route of targetting the younger users by overloading with colours, avatars and animations. (Also read about ICQ Lite/ICQ 5 later in the article)

Instant messaging: Instant messaging is the act of instantly communicating between two or more people over a network such as the Internet....

Computer program: A computer program or software program (usually abbreviated to "a program") is a step-by-step list of instructions written for a particular computer architecture in a particular computer programming language. A layman equivalent example would be writing a step-by-step list of instructions in English...

Mirabilis: Mirabilis can mean:...