ICQ

Management

Eliav Moshe - Managing Director of ICQ

Performance indicators

ICQ revenue in the second quarter of 2010 amounted to $8.1 million ($3.1 million less than a year earlier), and OIBDA decreased by $1.5 million to $5 million, follows from the AOL report. Previously, AOL did not disclose ICQ indicators, and now it did it so that analysts could rebuild the AOL valuation models without taking into account this asset, AOL representative Trisha Primrose explained to Vedomosti.

ICQ earns on the sale of advertising and its revenues are unlikely to change much from quarter to quarter, believes Troika Dialog analyst Anna Lepetukhina. This means that the gross revenue of ICQ for 2009 can be estimated at $40 million. ICQ's OIBDA for 2009 was about $20 million, says Primrose. She does not disclose the annual revenue of the service.

If we proceed from ICQ's annual revenue of $40 million, then its OIBDA margin could be 50% last year, and in the second quarter of 2010 it reached as much as 61.7%. This is a lot even for an Internet company, says Lepetukhina. China's Baidu has 43%, while Google has 35%. But Google shares revenue with partners, and Baidu spends a lot on development, Lepetukhina suggests. Of the Russian companies, the leader in profitability was Mail.ru for a long time (in 2008 - 60%), but after merging with Astrum, the indicator decreased to 43.9%. ICQ, being part of AOL, saved on infrastructure and, possibly, advertising, Lepetukhina suggests.

The decline in ICQ revenues in the second quarter of 2010 may be due to a drop in its popularity. According to Comscore, the number of ICQ users in the world for the year since June 2009 decreased by 14.4% to 30.3 million people, in Russia - by 7.8% to 7.5 million. The decline in the popularity of instant messengers is a global trend, says Osnat Zaretsky, senior development manager at Comscore in Europe: social networks are taking the audience.

The main revenues of ICQ are brought by banners and contextual advertising in search results. It is known that Rambler's revenue from advertising in ICQ amounted to about $6 million in 2008, and in 2009 there was a "similar result," a source close to it said.

Audience

2009

According to the company, ICQ had a global monthly audience of 47.3 million users in June 2009. Despite the fall in the global audience of the messenger, the number of its Russian users remained relatively stable from 2009 to 2011, and in the period from June 2010 to June 2011 it even increased from 15.1 million to 15.6 million users, having practically won back the fall in the previous year^[1].

2010

ICQ is available in 16 languages ​ ​ and has more than 32 million unique visitors per month (comScore Media Metrix data for February 2010) Almost 80 percent of ICQ users are young people aged 13 to 29 years who are connected to the service for an average of more than 5 hours a day. ICQ holds leading positions in the markets of Russia, Germany, the Czech Republic and Israel.

USA In ICQ, it is noticeably inferior in popularity to its competitors from,, and Microsoft Yahoo Google , Skype Windows Messenger having more than 500 million and more than 300 million users, respectively. AOL also owns another instant messaging service - AIM which is more popular in the United States than ICQ and is among the leaders in this market.

The world's largest messaging network, Tencent QQ, which has more than 1 billion users, is owned by a Chinese company.

As of November 13, 2010, the number of users connecting to ICQ via PC at least 1 times in the last 30 days was 47.9 million. This number includes users of both the "native" ICQ program (14.7 million people) and alternative clients (33.1 million). Adherents of the "native" aska are a minority: 44% of the total number of users of the service. In November 2009, the number of its non-unique users on the PC was 69.95 million. Thus, over the year, the number of ICQ connections fell by almost a third (31.5%). But the remaining users became more active (during the same time, the number of messages transmitted via "as" fell by only 15%), and the number of users entering "as" from various mobile devices increased over the same year.

2012

According to the company's final report for 2012, the global monthly audience of ICQ decreased from December 2011 to December 2012 by 41% - to 15.9 million people, the audience in the Russian Federation - by 37.6%, to 9.8 million people.

2013

The global monthly audience of the Internet messenger ICQ (owned by Mail.Ru Group) as of December 2013 amounted to 11 million users, the Russian audience - 6.7 million people, follows from the financial report of Mail.Ru.

For comparison, a year ago in December 2012, the global monthly audience of ICQ numbered 15.9 million people, that is, over the year it decreased by 30.9%. The audience of the messenger in Russia as of December 2012 was 9.8 million users, thus, its reduction over the past year was 31.7%.

ICQ in Russia

2010

In April 2010, ICQ Managing Director Eliav Moshe said that ICQ's audience in Russia is about 18.5 million per month. He admitted that these are users of the ICQ protocol, and how many of them the original ICQ messenger uses, he did not say. According to ICQ itself (September 2010), 40% of its Russian audience are users of programs that are not officially supported by the company (QIP, Miranda, Adium, Pidgin, etc.).

According to Comscore (2010), 5.9 million Russian users communicate with the ICQ messenger. The QIP messenger (uses the ICQ protocol) has approximately the same audience. There are other messengers that support the ICQ protocol - Miranda, Adium. ICQ fights them from time to time by changing protocol settings. After buying ICQ, DST may offer RBC (co-owner of Qip) and other companies to broadcast ICQ ads in their messengers under the threat of disabling the protocol, suggests Nigma.ru co-owner Viktor Lavrenko. The new owners have the right to decide how to deal with their assets, but in the world not a single large company (Microsoft, Tencent) has turned off alternative instant messengers - this only contributes to the transition of users to competitors, recalls the general director of Mediamir (part of RBC) Mikhail Gurevich.

2015

"Agent Mail.Ru" and ICQ exist for all platforms, while according to TNS statistics for large cities, "Agent Mail.Ru" is more popular on mobile than ICQ. In April 2015, both messengers of the Mail.ru Group were noticeably inferior to the communication products admitted by Microsoft (Skype), Facebook ( WhatsApp), Google and Viber. Even the audience of Agent Mail.Ru and ICQ put together does not allow the holding to enter the top three messengers on mobile platforms, we are talking about the lag of MRG at times.

Collaboration with Rambler

In 2005, Rambler entered into an agreement with ICQ and since then more than 6 million users have joined its version of the messenger. The Rambler ICQ messenger differs from the original version of ICQ in that it has built-in services of a Russian company - in particular, a search bar.

After ICQ came under the control of DST in April 2010, Rambler announced that they would continue to cooperate in any case: the Rambler-owned agency Index20 an exclusive contract to sell advertising in ICQ until 2012.

Cooperation with Yandex

In June 2009, Yandex"" agreed with ICQ to promote its messenger in. Russia When downloading the Russian version of the messenger from the site, icq.com users were asked to install a search bar and a toolbar Yandex"." "" Yandex distributed ICQ on yandex.ru. pages as well At the same time, ICQ received all revenues from media advertising, and "" Yandex- from contextual (posted in search results launched from ICQ).

In August 2009, a co-branding version of ICQ (Yandex-ICQ) appeared with a built-in search from Yandex. Even earlier, Yandex released the Internet pager Ya. Online, based on Jabber technology. Based on this technology, pagers and other Internet companies are produced, for example, Google and Livejournal, while users of various Jabber products can exchange messages with each other. The development of the Ya. Online project continues, but how many users have the program, Yandex does not say. Advertising in Yandex-ICQ was sold by the Index20 agency, part of the Rambler Media Group.

After ICQ came under the control of DST in April 2010, Yandex planned to continue the partnership unless the new owner decided otherwise. Nevertheless, on September 16, 2010, the contract concluded between Yandex and ICQ regarding the work of a joint version of the Internet pager ended. The contract will not be renewed. Yandex spokesman Ochir Manjikov said the company was pleased with the terms of cooperation. Product users will be prompted to upgrade to the original version of ICQ. The audience of Yandex - ICQ and the revenue that Yandex brought this product are not disclosed in the company. According to a source familiar with the situation, the contract was not renewed at the initiative of ICQ. Perhaps this is due to the fact that the Mail.ru controlled by DST has its own product - "Mail.ru-Агент" with an audience of 16 million unique users every month.

History

Announcement of service closure

At the end of May 2024, VK announced the closure of the ICQ messenger. The service will stop working on June 26, 2024.

VK will focus on the development of VK Messenger for users and corporate service based on the VK WorkSpace platform for business. To strengthen the examination, ICQ employees will join the product teams, VK said in a statement.

2021: ICQ downloads rise after WhatsApp plans to share data with Facebook

At the end of January 2021, there was a surge in ICQ user activity after the WhatsApp administration announced a change in service policy.

At the beginning of 2021, people began to download ICQ more often, and in some countries the growth was multiple. So, in Hong Kong, according to The Wall Street Journal, citing data from the analytical company Sensor Tower, the number of downloads of the messenger owned by the Mail.ru Group increased 35 times - from 200 to 7,000 in a week from January 5 to 12.

ICQ downloads increase after WhatsApp plans to share data with Facebook reveal

ICQ confirmed to the publication a sharp jump in interest in the service in Hong Kong and reported that the number of downloads for the week in January exceeded the figure for the entire fourth quarter of 2020. At the same time, the company did not disclose the general audience of the messenger and only named the countries where it is most in demand: Russia, Nigeria and Germany.

WhatsApp users around the world, worried about the service's upcoming change to its data privacy policy, have begun switching massively to other messaging apps, including Telegram, Signal and ICQ. On January 8, WhatsApp included in the user agreement a clause according to which personal data of users of the service is provided to the entire family of applications from Facebook (WhatsApp is part of Facebook). Users were asked to confirm the new agreement until February 8, but subsequently the service administration postponed the introduction of new rules for three months.

Hong Kong users also dislike Facebook's "attempts to curry favor with China," the WSJ writes. An ICQ spokeswoman told the newspaper that users' messages were "never shared with anyone" except by a court order.

Another reason for the growing popularity of ICQ, the publication calls the nostalgia of users who communicated on this messenger while at school.^[2]

2015: Mail.ru Group named ICQ brand a priority, but on the Agent Mail.Ru technical platform

ICQ has become a priority messenger for the Mail.ru Group,[1] Madina Tayupova, head of strategic PR projects at the holding, told Vedomosti^[3]. We are talking about the "merger" of the ICQ brand with the "Agent Mail.Ru" - another messenger owned by the holding. The "agent" will continue to work and there will be no forced transfer of its users to ICQ yet, but the technological process of the merger has been going on for a long time, Tayupova explained.

In January 2015 Mail.ru Group closed the messenger myChat^[4]. Igor Ermakov, head of Instant Messaging at Mail.ru Group, explained that myChat was a testing ground and its ideas were transferred to the new generation of ICQ. myChat appeared in November 2013 in the My.com package and was intended for the Western, not the Russian market, although it could also be used for communication, including with ICQ subscribers. In April 2014, MRG considered the existence of several programs of the same purpose a boon: "myChat and ICQ are two separate products that will continue to develop, adopt the most successful solutions from each other."

2011

In April 2011, Mail.Ru Group published a new license agreement on the use of the ICQ protocol.

The purpose of the new license agreement is to respect interests and create safe and convenient conditions for users to communicate, as well as build an open and constructive dialogue with all categories of ICQ clients, representatives of Mail.Ru Group said. For non-commercial products, working with the ICQ protocol is not associated with any restrictions, and all that is required of their authors is to comply with simple rules for using the protocol, namely, not to engage in mass mailing of unwanted messages, not to extract information from ICQ directories and databases and not mislead users by any methods.

"Legalization of all existing unofficial ICQ clients is one of the most important tasks for Mail.Ru Group at the current stage of product development. By announcing a new licensing agreement, we want to once again officially confirm our readiness to negotiate and find acceptable options for cooperation with other market players. After all, our common goal is to create safe and convenient communication conditions for users. Most recently, the decision to support the ICQ protocol in Nimbuzz was officially announced. The products with which we hope to announce cooperation in the near future are open-source programs Adium, Pidgin, R&Q, "said Alexander Gorny, head of ICQ in Russia.

In May 2011, testing of the first ever ICQ "native" client for began. OS Linux Thus, the "aska" began expansion into one of the last unattended operating systems. Testing of the beta version of ICQ for Linux, which became known on May 24, 2011, started in not quite open mode. The beta page is in the public domain, but most of the day on May 24, the link button by which you can download the ICQ client did not work. A spokesman for Mail.ru, the current owner, confirmed that testing will be widely announced in the coming days.

The ICQ client program for Linux is not a standalone application. To work, it requires Adobe an AIR environment installed on the system (which, in turn, requires Adobe Flash installed). Using Adobe AIR, the developers of the "aska" from Mail.ru greatly facilitated their work, but imposed serious restrictions on the hardware of the computer on which the ICQ client will run. Adobe lists processor Intel the Pentium 4 and 1GB of RAM on its website as the minimum requirements to run AIR.

Interestingly, with such requirements, "aska for Linux" will be deprived of some of the functionality available in the Windows version. In particular, the Linux version will not support audio and video calls on the ICQ network. The head of the ICQ project in Mail.ru, Alexander Gorny, told CNews that before further developing a program for Linux, the service would like to receive feedback from users about the existing beta version.

2010: Transition of control to DST

In December 2009, AOL split from Time Warner and began selling non-core assets. Among them was ICQ, which AOL estimated at $300 million.

Binding offers to buy the online messenger ICQ by April 2010 were submitted by Russian Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Profmedia, Chinese Tencent and South African Naspers. AOL invited several more Russian companies - mobile operators and Yandex - to participate in the ICQ tender, but they refused, sources close to the organizers of the deal and these companies told Vedomosti. When the results of the tender will be summed up, the interlocutors of Vedomosti do not know.

Profmedia offered about $120 million for ICQ, says one of the applicants. The DST proposal is higher, he argues. Earlier, a source from The Wall Street Journal, close to the participants in the potential deal, said that DST could offer $200-250 million for the company.

ICQ customers could be useful to Mail.ru and Rambler, controlled by DST and Profmedia, respectively, sources close to them said. Mail.ru has a similar project "Агент@Mail.ru" with a monthly audience of about 12 million users, and ICQ is its main competitor in Russia. Rambler became a partner of ICQ back in 2005, releasing a joint Russified version of the messenger - Rambler ICQ now has 5 million users. ICQ has a similar partnership with Yandex (4 million people). Tencent has a similar situation: it supports one of the most popular messengers in China - QQ.

As a result, on April 28, 2010, ICQ was sold to Russian DST for $187.5 million. That is, the DST estimated the ICQ to be about nine OIBDA indicators (see Q2 2010 performance above). This is the average multiplier for media companies, usually they trade at 10 EBITDA, says Lepetukhina.

1996-1998

In November 1996, ICQ was published. After only six months - in May 1997 - Tel Aviv partners, who had founded Mirabilis by that time, announced that the audience of their messenger users had reached a million. In 1998, ICQ was sold to American provider America Online for $287 million. Mirabilis became ICQ Inc. and became part of AOL. After that, the service slowed down its development.

Notes