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."

Comments

Let me be the first to say

[Anonymous Coward]

UhOh!

Re:Well, given the tons spam from that region

[MrNaz]

Just so you know, the US is still the number 1 spam source, both by number of spam relays and origin of spammers. There was a recent Slashdot article on this, and you can also check the ROKSO list if you're interested. Don't be spewing that "but our poor PCs are controlled by evil Chinese/Russians/Europeans/Eritreans who use our unwilling innocent users' PCs in their botnets" crap either. Most of the top 100 on the ROKSO list are American citizens.

Clean up your own backyard before you decide to make snarky comments about the Russians and Chinese. Yes, we know, they hate your freedom and they want to eat your babies, but nonetheless, try to stay factual.

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:A Russian company bought it?

[baka_toroi]

Right, because you can only find honest people and companies in the Glorious USA.

In Soviet Russia...

[Beelzebud]

In Soviet Russia, Q seeks I.

Am I missing something?

[darkpixel2k]

AOL has sold ICQ to Digital Sky Technologies (DST), Russia's largest Internet company, for US$187.5 million.

I connect to ICQ using Pidgin. I also connect to GTalk and a few XMPP servers using Pidgin. The XMPP server software is running on some version of Linux--probably Ubuntu or Debian. It was free to download, free to setup, and free to use. HOW THE #$*@# IS ICQ WORTH $187.5 MILLION?!?!.

Is the Windows ICQ client really a direct pipe for advertisers to watch your web surfing habits or turn on and view your webcam at random or something? How in the hell can you buy an instant messaging company for $187.5 million now-a-days? IM clients and servers are free.