1in the summer of 996, three young people from Israel got together and decided to develop a software to make full use of the characteristics of instant messaging on the Internet to realize rapid and direct communication between people, which led to the design idea of ICQ. At that time, their instant communication on the Internet almost became a personal "toy", and they also set up a small company called Mirabilis to provide ICQ services for all registered users.
Later, AOL bought ICQ for $287 million. In May, 1998, the number of users has exceeded 1 100 million, with an average of1100,000 users online every day, and the average online time of each user is three hours.
1999, a large number of online instant messaging software imitating ICQ emerged in China, such as the earliest Picq, cyccy, Ticq(TQ), Qicq, Micq, PCicq, Oicq, OMMO, etc. Sina, Netease, Chuyou and Baidu have also developed similar software, such as universal communication, Netease Bubble and Baidu. OICQ, the predecessor of QQ, was first launched in February of 1999.
QQ can stand out among so many online instant messaging software, and eventually all other competitors are buried, accounting for more than 74% of the online instant messaging software market in China, half by strength and half by luck.
History of Tencent QQ development1998165438+10/2, Ma and Zhang Zhidong, a college classmate, formally registered as "Shenzhen Tencent Computer System Co., Ltd.". At that time, the company's main business was to expand the wireless network paging system. At the beginning of the company's establishment, its main business was to establish an online paging system for paging stations. This kind of software development project for enterprises or units can be said to be the best choice for almost all small and medium-sized network service companies.
QQ basic browsing 1997, Ma came into contact with ICQ and became its user. He personally felt the charm of ICQ, and also saw its limitations: first, the English interface, and second, it was quite difficult to use, which made ICQ widely used in China, but it was not always particularly popular, and most of it was limited to "net-worm" level experts. At first, Ma and his partner wanted to develop a Chinese ICQ software and sell it to a powerful enterprise. At that time, Tencent didn't want to run an ICQ in China that needed huge investment but couldn't make any money. At that time, it was because a large enterprise intended to invest a lot of money in the field of Chinese ICQ. Tencent also wrote a project construction book and began to develop and design OICQ. When bidding, Tencent didn't win the bid. As a result, Tencent decided to do OICQ by itself. You know, at that time, Tencent gave OICQ a price of more than 300,000. Later, when Tencent began to develop rapidly, Ma said in a timely manner: "We need our own Chinese network software, and we need our own ICQ!" But in fact, Tencent's launch of OICQ is purely accidental. If that big company didn't plan to invest in ICQ in China, there wouldn't be OICQ. If Tencent wins the bid, there will be no OICQ of Tencent. Tencent's success is partly luck and partly strength. Later referred to as QQ.
QQ is used to simulate ICQ. ICQ is a chat tool for the international community, which means I'm looking for you. OICQ imitated it, adding an O before ICQ, which means "Open me to find you", but was accused of infringement, so Tencent boss changed the name of OICQ to QQ, which is the QQ we use now, except the name. Because the little penguin in logo is cute, it is cute in English, and because it is homophonic with Q, it is also a good name given to the little penguin by QQ.