What is ICQ, how to install and use it? What is an ICQ number Additional information status.

What is ICQ (ICQ)

ICQ is a Russian centralized instant messaging service on the Internet. Until 2010 it was American. The service is currently owned by Russian investment company Digital Sky Technologies. Uses OSCAR protocol.

The user of this service works with his client program, which is called messenger and runs on a device connected to the Internet. The messenger program connects to the ICQ server, through which it searches for other clients and communicates with them. The exchange of service messages and data between service users can be carried out both through the server and without it.

As in other modern powerful network systems that serve a huge number of requests, the ICQ server is not the only one and some of the servers are entire clusters.

The ICQ service is commercial, although its use is free. The service is managed by an organization ICQ Inc. The developer and first owner of the service was Mirabilis. This company sold the service to an American company in 1998 AOL, which resold it to a Russian investment fund in 2010 DST (Digital Sky Technologies).

Over the years, the ICQ service has released many messengers and has undergone significant changes. It is estimated that approximately 15 million people actively use the service, with approximately 400 million registered accounts.

Some companies on their official websites indicate UIN numbers in their contact lists. Technical support services often use ICQ to provide instant assistance. ICQ messengers exist for almost all platforms. There is even ICQ for the phone.

To use the service you need to register an account. This can be done through the client interface or the service's Internet site. Used to identify users UIN(Universal Identification Number) - unique for each account and consisting of 6-9 Arabic numerals. The UIN is assigned to the account when a new user registers in the system, after which, together with the password, it is used to authenticate the user in the system.

Unlike, for example, XMPP, connecting to the ICQ service through one account from several hosts at the same time is not possible. For each account, the service stores some additional information:

nickname is the display name of the service user, which, unlike the UIN, is not unique and can be changed;
email address, which makes it possible to restore access to your account if you lose your password, and can be used for authorization in the system instead of the difficult-to-remember UIN;
public information entered by the user. May include first name, last name, hobby, location, language skills, etc.;
avatar in JPEG, GIF or BMP format;
contact list, that is, a list of UIN numbers of interlocutors that the user can quickly access and see their presence status in the messenger window;
presence status(“available”, “busy”, “offline”, etc.);
additional information status client.

Message history is not saved on ICQ servers, but can be stored locally on the user's device by the client program. You can initiate correspondence with a user or add him to your personal contact list only by knowing his UIN. To search for users, the system has an internal search function accessible through the client interface. This search returns a list of users who meet the criteria entered in the query.

02.06.2010

Other interesting publications:

Last edit: 2016-01-25 14:19:12

Material tags: ,

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. We will not describe the history of ICQ from the beginning of its development - this is not of particular interest, and anyone can familiarize themselves with the information on Wikipedia.

Let's just say one thing: surely everyone is familiar with the icon of a green flower with one red petal? This is the official emblem of this program (it is also sometimes called “ICQ”), which has existed for a very long time.

What is ICQ? The ICQ protocol (which is named so not by chance - from the English I seek you - I'm looking for you) appeared a very long time ago. So long ago that many modern network users did not even know about the existence of open access to the Internet. But the messenger was already gaining momentum in popularity. They predicted oblivion and closure for him, as someone who has nothing to do in the modern world. However, everything happened completely differently. The popularity remains, and what a popularity it is! Why? All because of the three main advantages of the program -.

Judge for yourself: to use other programs you may need additional devices (for example, for Skype - a camera and microphone), for others - good computer resources. What is needed in order to? Nothing at all: a minimum of hard drive space and a list of contacts with whom you can communicate.

No special setup procedure, no additional gadgets. In ICQ, everything is simple - you do your business, visit different sites (read) and at the same time correspond with a dozen or more contacts. After ICQ registration is completed, you will have your user's own number, under which other users can identify you. But let's consider everything in order.

How to install ICQ on a computer

Of course, first of all you need to download the program from the official website icq.com .

You can also use third-party resources, but there will be no guarantee of the security of the downloaded program. happens as follows:

Installation on Android

Of course, many users, due to the compactness of the program and its undemanding system capabilities, want to install ICQ for Android. How to install ICQ on Android? This is done even easier than on a computer:

By and large, there is no difference in the program settings for both computers and mobile devices. Everywhere you need to enter your data, come up with a password, and get a user number. Therefore, let's combine the ICQ settings into one whole.

How to get a number and start using ICQ?

After the program is installed on the media, you need to register in it. ICQ is one of the simplest clients, so registration is carried out in several steps.

On the main page of the application that opens, select the button "Register". A registration window will appear in front of you, in which you need to fill out all the fields provided. You need to enter the bare minimum of data - last name, first name, gender, date of birth, email address and password.

In this case, you need to remember one important nuance: the password must contain at least 6 characters, and they cannot be repeated more than three times (in other words, the password 122221 and the like will not work - read). After you have registered, you need to go to the specified mailbox in order to verify your page. Find the letter, click on the link and follow it.

To find out your ICQ number, which was automatically assigned to you by the system, you just need to click on the “Menu” button in the window that opens (bottom right) and select the “My Profile” item.

As a result, you will be taken to your account on the ICQ website, where your nine-digit ICQ number will appear in the upper right corner.

ICQ setup

So, you have opened ICQ and can already use its capabilities. But first you need to import contacts or, in other words, add other contacts to your friends list. In the search, you can clarify who exactly you are looking for - indicate gender, age or country of residence.

Of course, it will be much easier if you know the user number. By the way, regarding the number. Many people wonder what is an ICQ number? This is your online identifier, thanks to which you can log into the program or find you in the system.

This is a kind of id address, like in any social network. How to recognize it was written just above. And it is advisable to save your own number somewhere on your computer or mobile device. Now you remember it, but a couple of days will pass and you will have to go through the registration procedure again.

By clicking on the “Menu” button and selecting “My Profile”, you can set a picture for your account. You can take a photo from your webcam or simply upload an image from any device. If this is not possible, ICQ can offer you many animated avatars.

There are a huge number of different settings (you can get to them by clicking the “Menu” button at the bottom and selecting "Settings", but let's focus only on the most important. The “File Transfer” item provides for setting the default directory for saving downloaded resources. Just change it to the one that is most convenient for your use.

And finally, it remains to consider the case when the password for your account is lost. How it happens in ICQ password recovery? Fortunately, you can recover your password very quickly. Click on the “Forgot your password” button (located directly below the line for entering the password), after which you need to indicate your web ICQ number or the phone number you used to register.

There is another option: go to the official ICQ website and select the item in the “Support” section. You will be prompted to enter the same data. Afterwards, you can go to your e-mail and find a letter that will contain a link to change your password.

In this way you can recover your password for accessing ICQ. By the way, . Therefore, let us remind you once again: save it and try not to lose it.

Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site

History of the creation of ICQ

Tel Aviv. 1995 It’s still a bit of a novelty, but you can already feel its colossal potential. It was at this time that four Israeli high school students (Arik Vardi, Sefi Vigiser, Yair Goldfinger and Amnon Amir) created a simple and quite convenient Internet pager to communicate with each other. Startup? For pity’s sake, they didn’t even know such words back then. Everything is much more prosaic: the guys just needed a simple program that would “eat up” a minimum of computer resources and, most importantly, could transmit messages between users via .

From the beginning, the program had no name at all. Then someone suggested calling it the first letters of the phrase “I seek you” - “I am looking for you.” After a little reflection, a collegial decision was made that the new development would bear the proud name of ICQ.

Since the guys, although they were only high school students, were Israeli high school students, they quickly realized their advantage. A company created in a short time Mirabilis Already in November 1996, it officially announced that the ICQ program was available for free download.

What started as innocent fun, the idea of instant messaging almost instantly spread beyond the circle of friends and spread throughout the world. Moreover, the popularity of ICQ grew like a snowball. In 1996, the number of ICQ users already exceeded a million people. Do not forget that at that time not everyone had the Internet, and such a figure inspired respect even for serious companies. By the way, the first devoted fans of the program were numerous teenagers who quickly were able to appreciate the ease and potential of “Asi”.

ICQ and AOL

Around the same time, companies AOL solved a serious problem of expanding the circle of users of its new messenger AIM. AIM was integrated into the then popular Netscape Navigator, which was also owned by AOL. Yes, the company already had approximately 10 million users, but they could not be called active. The fact is that every registered AOL client automatically became an AIM user. This is exactly the case when quantity stubbornly refused to develop into quality.

AOL understood that if you couldn’t create something of your own, then you had to buy someone else’s. As you probably already guessed, one day AOL managers approached the Mirabilis company and its main brainchild - ICQ.

I don’t want to lie: by mid-1997 the Israeli company was feeling quite tolerable. Just look at the staff, which by that time had grown to 100 people. Add to this the incredibly successful release of a special ICQ server for enterprises, which only strengthened the company’s position. Yes, ICQ did not yet have 10 million users, but everyone understood that over time they would appear. And much more than 10 million: the pager was incredibly popular and broke all records for downloads on the main profile portal Download.com.

I won’t bore you: in 1998, the Mirabilis company was completely bought out by AOL for a colossal sum for that time of $407 million. Thus, AOL not only strengthened its position in the market and bought a very promising service, but also wiped its nose with other companies that were also wouldn't mind becoming ICQ owners.

ICQ: from dawn to dusk

Until about 2005, ICQ was gaining amazing momentum. So, in the same “golden” year of 2005, the number of ICQ users reached its peak - 500 million people. This triumph, however, did not last so long. Since the direction was more than promising, well-known companies soon appeared on the market Miranda, QIP and other alternative clients.

Unlike the old ICQ, they did not stuff users with annoying built-in , and their registration data was fully compatible with ICQ. Naturally, some of the users immediately “switched” to new ones.

Let's give credit to the owners of ICQ - they tried to fight the arrogant "relatives", but these efforts were, rather, aimed only at preserving their own reputation. Whenever AOL made changes that made alternative clients impossible to use, the developers of the alternative clients quickly rewrote the code and restored the functionality of their programs.

This happened repeatedly, but did not bear any visible fruit: a maximum of a day after changing the protocol, users of the same Miranda again worked with the program without any problems. It was obvious that a pack of small predators were mercilessly tearing apart the once monolithic ICQ audience.

And then they arrived in time, taking over a considerable part of ICQ users. Don’t forget that data transfer speeds gradually increased, affordable unlimited tariffs appeared, and traffic savings stopped bothering anyone. Many went to, which has become a worthy alternative due to its powerful functionality. As a result, ICQ began to seriously lose ground.

Finally, in 2010, the ICQ service was purchased by the Russians, and specifically by the Digital Sky Technologies investment fund, which was led by the famous billionaire Alisher Usmanov. Moreover, the purchase amount was ridiculous - 187 million versus 407 million spent on ICQ more than 10 years ago. In fact, Usmanov bought an unprofitable enterprise, which he soon fully realized. Already in September 2010, ICQ joined the Mail.ru Group (which today owns the two most popular social networks on the Runet - and).

And now some numbers so that you understand the depth of the decline: every year since 2010, ICQ has lost about 20% of its users. Today the statistics are as follows: around the world, about 12 million people use ICQ. At the same time, the number of Russians reaches 8 million. By the way, I suspect that at least a third of them are registered users. Just kidding, of course. The program is catastrophically losing popularity, which is simply stupid to deny. The whole world has practically forgotten about it, only small islands of recognition remain, one of which is still Russia.

To be honest, I just don’t see the potential in the program that will help it rise from its knees. Let's be honest: the time of ICQ is over, today there are other favorites on the scene for a long time.

And yet, thank you, good old ICQ! You were once much more than just a program to millions of us. You were the door to a new world, which turned out to be the Motherland for many of us!

ICQ is a centralized instant messaging service using the OSCAR protocol. The service user works with a client program (the so-called messenger) running on a device connected to the Internet. The messenger connects to the server. Through the server, searching and communication with other clients is carried out, and the exchange of service data and messages between users can be carried out both through the server and without its participation. As with most powerful network systems that serve a huge number of client requests, this server is not the only one and some of them are clusters of servers.

The service is commercial, but its use is free. Operates the ICQ Inc. service. Since its inception, the service belonged to its developer, Mirabilis, in 1998 it was sold to the American company AOL, and in April 2010 to the Russian investment fund Digital Sky Technologies (DST). After the reorganization of DST in September 2010, ICQ became part of the Mail.Ru Group. In addition to ensuring the functioning of the service, ICQ Inc. develops client programs and maintains an auxiliary web portal.

Over the years, ICQ has released many clients and undergone many changes. As of December 2011, the total monthly audience of ICQ in Russia is 15.7 million (in the world - 27 million) (http://corp.mail.ru/communications). Some companies indicate UIN numbers in their contact lists on official websites. ICQ is often used by technical support services for instant assistance.

Service

Account

To use the service, you need to register an account, which can be done through the client interface as well as the Internet portal. To identify users, the service uses UIN (Universal Identification Number)- a unique number for each account, consisting of 5-9 Arabic digits. This number is assigned to the account during the user’s initial registration in the system, after which, paired with a password, it can be used for authentication in the system. The latest version of the mobile client for J2ME has the ability to log in using a mobile phone number, which becomes the login for the new user.

In the fall of 2011, an important change was made to ICQ: the ICQ service now supports multiple connections using the same account.

For each account, the service stores the following data:

nickname - the user's display name, which, unlike the UIN, can be changed, and which is not unique, that is, it can be the same for different accounts;
email address, which makes it possible to restore access to the account in case of loss of the password, and can also be used to log in to the system instead of the difficult-to-remember UIN (previously used also for searching);
public information entered by the user, which may include first name, last name, list of hobbies, geographic location, knowledge of languages, text description, etc.;
one avatar in BMP, JPEG or GIF format;
contact list - dial UIN-numbers of interlocutors, generated by the user, to which he can have quick access and view their presence status through the client interface;
presence status;
additional information status.

The history of messages on the servers is not saved, and can only be stored locally by the client program on the user’s device, and be accessible through its interface.

You can initiate a conversation with another user and add him to your contact list if you know him UIN. In turn, to search for users in the system, there is an internal search function, accessible through the client interface, which allows you to obtain lists of users who meet the criteria entered in the search query: a match by nickname, as well as additional information entered by users.

Ability to delete an account

Initially, this possibility existed, but after the reorganization in 2002, it became impossible to delete the account (UIN). This resulted in hundreds of “ghosts” - accounts registered in the system, but not used. Currently, the option to delete an account exists again and is available on the official ICQ website.

Presence status

Each account has a presence status associated with it, which is an indicator of whether the user is connected to the network or not, and whether he is currently ready to respond to messages. The user's status is also shown in the contact list and in the dialog window. The user's main status serves as an indicator of his presence in the system and his readiness to respond to messages (although recently the number of statuses has increased sharply and no longer meets these requirements). Traditionally, there are a number of basic statuses.

If the user is not in the system at all at the moment (not authorized), then he is assigned the status “Offline” or “Offline”; if he is online (authorized), then he is assigned the status “Online” or “Online”. There are also several intermediate statuses:

Away - indicates that the user was not active for a certain time (did not move the mouse or press any keys). The status can also be set manually; usually it is signaled by a short period of absence from the computer.
Unavailable (N/A - Not Available) - indicates that the user received the “Away” status and from that moment continued to be in an inactive state for a certain time. It can also be set forcibly and usually signals long-term absence from the computer (exception: in ICQ 5.x this status is set automatically when switching to full-screen mode).

As a rule, automatic transition to these statuses (Away and N/A) can be disabled in the client settings.

There are also “Free for chat”, “Do not disturb” and “Occupied” statuses. Starting with ICQ 4, they cannot be affixed, but can be read from other users who, for example, use ICQ 2003b or lower, as well as from many alternative clients. However, with the advent of ICQ 6, the ability to set the Occupied status returned, but the ability to receive the Free for chat status was lost. It is also worth noting that in ICQ 6 the Do not disturb and Occupied statuses set for another user are perceived the same, that is, as Occupied.

In addition, the user can set a special mode for the account - “invisible mode”. In this mode, other users will receive an “offline” presence status for their account, and only users whose accounts have been added to visibility list user.

Additional information status

Since the advent of ICQ 5, small additions have been made to the ICQ protocol, which allowed users to have two statuses at once - basic And additional [specify] . However, until a certain point (namely until the release of ICQ 6, in which, however, minor changes were made in this aspect of the protocol), this was nothing more than a feature of the ICQ protocol, which is used by many alternative ICQ clients. ICQ 5 and ICQ 5.1 offered the user only the opportunity to set either one of the main statuses or any of the additional ones. However, it is worth noting that if the client settings set the mode to automatically switch to the Away and/or N/A status after a certain time, then it could be quietly placed on top of the additional status set by the user. The cost of fully implementing this mechanism in ICQ 6 was the inability to view the additional status and its content in older versions of ICQ (5.0x and 5.1). However, there is also a plus - the ability to insert formatted RTF text into the status.

Contact list

When adding a contact you may need authorization- permission to see his presence status and send him files. For such contacts, an authorization request is generated, which reaches the user of the added account in the form of a system notification, to which he can respond either with consent or refusal, optionally providing the decision with a text comment.

You can have a maximum of 1000 contacts.

Private lists

To ensure the necessary level of confidentiality in ICQ, there are several lists that perform a specific function, in which each user can enter any contacts without notifying the latter.

There are 3 lists:

Ignored list - users who are on this list do not receive any notifications, they are not shown any status of the adder, except “Offline”. When added to this list, the user is removed from the contact list; when deleted, the user is added automatically. If the contact requires authorization, you will have to request it again.

Seeing list - users from this list are shown the “Invisible” status if it is selected, with the exception of the “Invisible to everyone” option, which is possible in some alternative clients (for example, QIP, Miranda, RnQ and others).

Blind list - users on this list are always shown the "Offline" status, with the exception of the "Visible to everyone" option available in some alternative clients.

The maximum number of contacts in each list is limited.

User directory

Search

Messaging

You can conduct personal correspondence with each of the contacts. If the sender has not disabled this feature, then, depending on the client, the recipient is informed that the message is being typed, which creates the effect of the presence of the sender. The length of the sent message is limited [ specify] .

If the recipient was not online at the time the messages were sent, they will be saved by the service and delivered to the recipient as soon as he connects to the network.

The service allows you to use formatting in the text of sent messages, namely, to determine the typeface, color, style and font size of message fragments, the direction of the text, and also insert emoticons into messages.

Sending files

ICQ implements file transfer using Peer-to-peer technology, that is, with a direct Internet connection between two computers, bypassing the server. File transfer is only possible when the recipient's status is “Online”. This method of transferring files can be dangerous because the sender will recognize the recipient (or vice versa) or send him malicious software. Starting with ICQ 5, it became possible to transfer files through the ICQ server itself, which plays an intermediary role. This is necessary if the ICQ client has determined that a P2P connection cannot be established (closed ports in firewalls, lack of a personal external IP, etc.).

Compatibility

ICQ has limited compatibility with the AIM instant messaging service. ICQ users can add AIM service users to their contact list, and vice versa.

In the fall of 2011, ICQ added compatibility with the popular messenger Mail.Ru Agent in Russia.

Client

Since its inception, the owners of the service have been developing and providing users with a free computer client program. Currently it is presented in two versions: ICQ Lite and ICQ 7.0 (for Russia, the ICQ 7.0 program has customization from Rambler and Yandex companies)

The client's graphical interface contains banner advertising; the program's source code is closed. As of March 1, 2012, ICQ stopped displaying advertising for users in Russia and the CIS.

Initially, the program for using ICQ was created by Mirabilis. It was called ICQ, and all subsequent official clients bore the same name (with the exception of Compad).

The name of the official client always begins with “ICQ” (except for a failed project Compad). Later clients provide additional functions under the general name ICQ Xtraz, such as: games, SMS sending, IP telephony, video conferencing, multichat and many others.

There are also localized versions of clients, which are supported by local IT companies. These clients usually have a different name from the base one, which includes the name of the corresponding company. The company usually provides country-specific advertising banners and allows you to link your service account to its services (for example, mail).

Terms of Use

Correspondence on ICQ is not personal (confidential) in the truest sense of the word, even though there are usually two active interlocutors. In accordance with the rules for using the service, all rights to information transmitted within the service are transferred to AOL Inc., including the rights to publish and distribute at its own discretion. The fact of using the service means the user accepts these terms.

With recognition of the rules of use ( acceptable use policy) the user transmits to ICQ Inc. all copyrights to the data that he published within the ICQ service.

You agree that by submitting any material or information through any ICQ service, you assign copyright and any other proprietary rights to the published material or information. You further agree that ICQ Inc. has the right to use the published material or information in any form and for any purpose, including, but not limited to, its publication and distribution.

Original text(English)

You agree that by posting any material or information anywhere on the ICQ Services and Information you surrender your copyright and any other proprietary right in the posted material or information. You further agree that ICQ Inc. is entitled to use at its own discretion any of the posted material or information in any manner it deems fit, including, but not limited to, publishing the material or distributing it.

Practice of use

Third Party Clients

In addition to the official clients provided by AOL and its partners, there are a number of unofficial clients created by third-party developers. Among them are clients for different platforms, released under free and proprietary licenses, multi-protocol and exclusively supporting the ICQ service.

These clients were created using reverse engineering of the OSCAR protocol, thereby violating the ICQ Terms of Services. The OSCAR protocol specification was only made public in 2008.

Such clients, due to the peculiarities of their implementation, as a rule, provide the user with some capabilities that cannot be provided by currently released versions of AOL clients. Such opportunities may include:

the ability to use the service on a wider range of platforms - namely, on those platforms for which versions of the official client are not released or for which support has been discontinued (for example, Windows Mobile);
less demanding on computer hardware resources;
great opportunities for configuring the behavior of the program, its graphical interface, the use of additional functions (for example, checking for ignore), etc.;
for clients with an open development model - the ability to explore and modify the source code of the program;
for multi-protocol clients - the ability to combine communication using several different protocols at once in one program.

On the other hand, the capabilities of ICQ Xtraz, which provides entertainment services, are not available to them.

Unofficial clients can also add additional functionality related to the implementation of the service. In particular, the following options may be available:

sending text of any length by breaking it into separate messages by the client himself;
prohibition of sending notifications to the interlocutor about typing a message;
adding a user requiring authorization to the contact list without going through it;
encryption of transmitted messages if both interlocutors are using a compatible client.

Universal clients

Alternative clients

Specialized Clients

Jimm and its modifications - for mobile phones and smartphones.
Wapalta is a mobile application that has an ICQ module. Designed for mobile phones that support Java MIDP 2.0.
Pigeon! - ICQ client for Windows Mobile; later support for a number of other services was added.

Web Services

meebo is a client implemented as a web service.
imo.im is an alternative web client with encryption.

Gateways

Misuse

The ICQ service is also used to send unwanted advertisements. When registering, a new user is assigned a UIN, which is a random number from a certain range; previously numbers were registered in ascending order. This greatly simplifies the task of compiling a list of existing spam recipients and reduces it to a simple enumeration of a given range. For many clients, there are plugins that block messages from bots (so-called “anti-spam bots” that ask questions that require meaningful answers) to filter out automatically sent messages.

There is a practice of stealing short and “beautiful” numbers by crackers, who guess passwords, or use other hijacking methods (Trojans) for the purpose of further resale or extorting money from the former owner of the number. Currently, you can register a nine-digit ICQ number on the official ICQ website, and six-digit ICQ numbers were registered in -1997. Now such numbers can be bought in online stores, and their price ranges from five to several thousand dollars, depending on the number.

Story

In 1996, Arik Vardi, Yair Goldfinger, Sefi Vigiser and Amnon Amir, high school students from Tel Aviv (Israel), founded Mirabilis and created the Internet pager ICQ.

The software was initially distributed free of charge (unlike competitors).

The number of users grew like an avalanche. Mirabilis offered IM not only to private users, but also to corporate clients.

In 1998, the company was purchased by the American corporation AOL for $407 million and was transformed into part of the Time Warner division - ICQ, Incorporated.

As a result, Microsoft abandoned its plans.

In April 2010, the investment fund Digital Sky Technologies (DST), co-owned by Alisher Usmanov, entered into an agreement with AOL to acquire the instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million. After the reorganization of DST in September 2010, ICQ became part of the Mail.Ru Group.

Protocol Modifications

From mid-2008 to early 2009, the service made technical changes to the protocol, the actual consequence of which was interruptions in the work of unofficial clients. During the same period, AOL published messages in press releases and on the service website recommending the use of only official, so-called. authorized clients of the service. Below is a chronology of significant events.

Burglar attacks

On August 16, 2010, attackers, using a communicating bot, began sending out a file with a virus that changed the UIN password and sent the same virus to the entire contact list.

Malfunctions

At various times, the media reported about failures in the service, as a result of which it became unavailable to users for some time.

Brand

Flower - ICQ logo and symbol

ICQ and its logo are a fairly well-known and recognizable brand. The logo is a stylized image of a daisy flower with a yellow disc and eight petals, seven of which are green and one is red.

This image is used not only as a service logo, but also in the official client interface to visualize the process of connecting the client to the server, and also as an ideogram of presence statuses.

The name ICQ itself is an English homophone of the phrase “I seek you.”

In Russia

The word “ICQ”, in turn, is a slang name for any ICQ client, a common noun, and, therefore, is written with a small letter (however, depending on the context, this word can also mean an account - “register ICQ”, or account number - “six-digit Asya”).

In China

As of January 29, 2010, ICQ is blocked in China, but users can use the Chinese equivalent -.

Prospects

According to Mail.ru Group, the monthly audience of ICQ worldwide from December 2009 to December 2010 decreased by 35% (17.6 million people) and amounted to 33.5 million people. In Russia, by December 2010, the audience amounted to 16.4 million people (decreased by 9% over the year). According to a report published on September 5, 2012 by Mail.ru Group