ICQ inducted into CNET hall of fame

Jerusalem Post ^ | Jul. 31, 2003 | BEZALEL STERN

[yonif]

ICQ, created by Israel-based Mirabilis in 1996, was among the first products to be inducted into CNET Download.com's "hall of fame" Tuesday.

ICQ (pronounced "I seek you") is an Internet instant messaging application with more than 160 million registered users. The program was sold to America Online (AOL) in June 1998 for $407m. in what represented the first major acquisition of an Israeli technology company by a foreign investor.

According to CNET, the programs chosen for its new hall of fame must have been listed on CNET Download.com for at least five years, have earned an "Editor's Pick" recommendation, and have remained on the Web site's "most popular" list throughout being shown on the site.

Tel-Aviv based ICQ, which soared to stardom as the first Israeli startup to make the major league despite starting out with no revenues, business plan, or any idea of how the company would ever make money, represented, for many computer programmers, the great Israeli dream. The program also quickly became one of the most popular ways of keeping in touch with friends over the Internet. With only 850,000 people using the software in 1997, ICQ had over 40 million users in 1999, and enjoys over 160 million today.

According to Scott Arpajian, senior vice president of CNET, the company's "most popular list serves as the barometer for software market trends, explaining the past, showing the present, and predicting the future of on-line software development. The length of time our inductees have remained popular with editors and users on our site speaks volumes about the quality of their products."

ICQ will join Adobe's Adobe Reader, WinZip Computing's WinZip, and AOL's Winamp as the first four downloads to make it into CNET's hall of fame.

[yonif]

ICQ, created by Israel-based Mirabilis in 1996, was among the first products to be inducted into CNET Download.com's "hall of fame" Tuesday.

[Lunatic Fringe]

ICQ is a great product... but the marketing power of Yahoo Messenger has drowned out this superior messenger in favor of a mediocre one.

[IncPen]

"I'd like to thank the internet for this award, and especially Al Gore. Al, wherever you are, this one's for you."