WEB: After 20 years of existence, its new owner, Verizon, made the announcement Friday …
Ah, the little yellow guy. Provided in the late 90s with the installation of AOL CD, the instant messaging service, AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) will permanently close on the 15th December. Verizon, which bought AOL and Yahoo and merged them into the Oath subsidiary, announced this Friday.
All good things come to an end. On Dec 15, we’ll bid farewell to AIM. Thank you to all our users! #AIMemories https://t.co/b6cjR2tSuU pic.twitter.com/V09Fl7EPMx
— AIM (@aim) 6 October 2017
This is a final death: not only the software will no longer be available for download, but the platform for sending messages will be disconnected, and all data erased users on 15 December.
Dethroned by mobile messaging
First “social” experience for many users, AIM was launched in 1997 by AOL and became the leading instant messaging in North America. In Europe it has never managed to dethrone MSN and ICQ especially, launched in 1996, AOL bought two years later.
If MSN and AIM now rest in peace, ICQ still exists. Bought by Russian Mail. Ru, ICQ continue to be updated with a new version launched in 2016.
Web pioneers in the era of PCs, these chat services have all missed the turn smartphones. These dinosaurs unsuited to their new environment, they were overtaken by other messaging services such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, which today more than one billion monthly users. Natural selection is ruthless.
