Although probably not quite as inflammatory as RIM’s current stance against Kik Messenger, Research In Motion has decided that they won’t be working on ICQ for BlackBerry anymore, and that as of December 4, they’ll be turning off the instant messaging service. RIM’s not alone, either – Nimbuzz dropped ICQ a few weeks ago, too.
The main difference between the ICQ app for BlackBerry versus Android or iPhone is that RIM is the one who made the app. RIM uses the same architecture for all of the major instant messaging clients, but I guess this one is just old and unpopular enough to not be worth the trouble.
I definitely remember using ICQ well before MSN and Google Talk, and even once those other two came out, it was still kind of cool because you could see what people would type as they typed, kind of like Google Wave. Anyway, one can only hope that ICQ takes on the chore of developing a BlackBerry client on their own watch to keep their few users happy.
If you’re a die-hard avid user, you can find more info about the shut-down at this knowledge base article.
[via BlackBerry Rocks]