[ Thanks to John
Gowin for this link. ]
“In Part 1 of this series, we took a look at AOL Instant
Messenger clients for GNU/Linux. In Part 2, we’ll take a look at
some ICQ clients and see how they measure up to their Windows
counterpart, ICQ2000b.”
“ICQ (A play on the phrase “I Seek You”) is one of the most
mature instant messenger services on the Internet. Started in the
mid 1990s by an Israeli company called Mirabilis, ICQ claims to
have close to 88 million registered users worldwide. Yes.
That’s what I said: 88,000,000.”
“It is no wonder that AOL purchased Mirabilis (for 287 million
US$) in 1998 to gain access to their huge user base. In addition to
the user base, AOL got an edge in the Instant Message game by
buying AOL Instant Messenger’s largest competitor. Surprisingly,
since that purchase, no attempt to merge the two services has been
made to create one client with the benefits of both AIM and ICQ.
But any merger of these two services would be a daunting task to
say the least.”
[ Reviewed ICQ clients include GnomeICU, Licq and Kicq – LT
ed. ]