The ability to sign up a new account was removed, and no ads of any kind were present in the ICQMail AOL-powered interface (a nice bonus for ICQMail users).Īnother thing that changed is that when existing users signed in to ICQMail, there was a notice that stated that any account not logged in to for more than 90 days would be automatically removed. When AOL sold to Mail ru, ICQMail did *not* switch mail platforms and continued to be an AOL Mail service. Digital Sky Technologies is now known as the Mail ru Group. In 2010, AOL decided to dump ICQ and sold the company to Digital Sky Technologies, a company based in Russia. ICQMail ran as its own service until being switched over to the AOL Mail platform, presumably for easier administration on AOL's part.ĭuring the years ICQMail was running on the AOL Mail platform, it looked identical to the AOL Mail web interface and had almost every feature AOL Mail did, including Calendar and free POP3 and IMAP4 connectivity.

It is unknown whether the ICQMail service was launched before or after the AOL acquisition. This was a service similar to Hotmail of the time where users were allowed to sign up an account for free, were only given a very small amount of storage space, and the interface was ad-supported. In June 1998, AOL, then still known as America Online, acquired ICQ.Īt some point in the 1990s (the date is uncertain), ICQ decided to launch a web-based only e-mail service, ICQMail.

ICQ is an instant messaging service initially released in November 1996 the original company that developed and released both the service and client software was Mirabilis, which was based in Israel.

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