What many of us have not considered, and may care less about because of our stance on being truthful and outward know that truth needs to be standard, is that surveillance [is] a thing. We jave heard about surveillance being active in various parts of the world. After going through informationsl link for only a few minutes you will comclude that America is, too, under surveillance and now matter the platform, even though a platform may be private used internet is scrutinized by a few outside governments that have actually infiltrated what was considered an avenue of frees speech. Yes, speech is free, but also and possibly scrutinized and kept logged in the cloud. My suggestion is that we all keep it one hunnid, and express what we mean with no F'Qn regrets☝🏿🙂.

ICQ, which stands for "I Seek You," was a standalone instant messaging client that predated and influenced many popular chat programs of the era, such as AIM, Yahoo! Messenger and MSN Messenger ¹. ICQ was launched in November 1996 by Israeli company Mirabilis and offered a number of innovative features including multi-user chat, async offline messaging, resumable file transfers and a searchable directory ¹. Users were issued a unique User Identification Number, or UIN, upon registration. This number, along with custom handles and an attached email address, were used to search for other users on the platform ¹.

ICQ's success captivated potential suitors, prompting AOL to acquire it for $287 million in 1998 ¹. America Online would manage to grow ICQ's user base tenfold over the next three years, surpassing more than 100 million registered users by the spring of 2001 ¹. However, the coming decade would again reinvent personal communication, driving conversations from mouse and keyboard to mobile devices ¹. ICQ's user base declined steadily over the following years, and the platform was sold to a Russian conglomerate called Digital Sky Technologies in 2010 ³. Despite a reboot performed by Mail.ru, ICQ failed to restore its popularity, with users moving to WhatsApp, Viber, and Skype instead of using the new app version ².

Today, ICQ is still being developed and used by 11 million people worldwide each month ¹. The latest stable release in desktop was this month (as of February 2022), version 10.0.46581, while Android and iOS apps have also been recently updated ¹. The core functionality - the ability to chat with friends and family - remains ¹.

¹: [TechSpot](https://www.techspot.com/article/1771-icq/)
²: [Winaero](https://winaero.com/the-icq-messenger-is-no-longer-available-on-google-play/)
³: [illumy](https://www.illumy.com/icq-instant-messaging/).

Source: Conversation with Bing, 12/17/2023
(1) What Ever Happened to ICQ? | TechSpot. https://www.techspot.com/article/1771-icq/.
(2) What Made ICQ a Trailblazer in Instant Messaging - illumy. https://www.illumy.com/icq-instant-messaging/.
(3) The ICQ messenger is no longer available on Google Play - Winaero. https://winaero.com/the-icq-messenger-is-no-longer-available-on-google-play/.
(4) Is ICQ safe? Find out how secure this new app is - MacPaw. https://macpaw.com/how-to/is-icq-safe.
(5) ICQ - Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ.
(6) en.wikipedia.org. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICQ.