Russian Company Buys ICQ

An anonymous reader writes "AOL has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Russia's largest Internet company, for US$187.5 million. DST's offer was apparently more attractive than those of Russia's ProfMedia and China's Tencent. ICQ, originally released in 1996 and bought by AOL in 1998 for US$407 million, was one of the world's first major instant messaging systems. Although largely forgotten in English-speaking countries, it remains widely popular in Central Europe, Russia, and Israel. Moscow News has additional coverage of the deal."

Not good

[masterwit]

"The company was forgetting what the "A" in AOL stands for (America, in case you forgot), losing its identity in a quick, worrisome desire to sprawl out in uncontrolled growth."----- Great there goes my ISP...and to think AOL was so fast. Insert "In Mother Russia" joke...

Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

UhOh!

Re:I still PREFER! ICQ

[Hurricane78]

ICQ assumes multi-line messages. (No "send-on-enter" crap.)

Most clients allow you to configure Ctrl-Enter as submit shortcut. Then enter does create new lines.
Or if not possible, you can use Ctrl-Enter for multi-line messages, and Enter to submit. But it's hard and annoying.
And obviously, MSN is the exception, as its users would not have the mental capacity to imagine wanting something like that in the first place.

But unfortunately, this does not protect you from the retards
who
lol
write
their ;)))
messages
like
this
lol
inlucidng
no
puntcuatin
ro
preppr spelng.

Luckily, there still is per-user invisibility and ignore lists. :)

Re:Very popular

[Scaba]

*yawn*, I have a six digit one starting with '2' I don't think it has received a valid non-spam message in three years ago.

double *yawn* I have a negative account number that's also an irrational number. I receive messages from the future.

Re:Well, given the tons spam from that region

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Absurd, good sir.

America's culture of freedom and individual responsibility has made it a hotbed of unconventional electronic marketing entrepreneurs.

Godless elsewhereistan's degenerate criminality makes it a hive of spammer scum.

Get the Facts(tm)!

Re:Very popular

[sentientbeing]

Mine ends in an i, its an imaginary number in the complex plane and I receive messages from another dimension.

In Soviet Russia...

[Beelzebud]

In Soviet Russia, Q seeks I.

Re:Whatever happened to PAL?

[Yvan256]

It got replaced by NTSC.