Pioneering internet messenger ICQ shuts after 28 years
A pioneering internet messaging service that once boasted 100 million accounts has shut down, a message on the Russian-owned ICQ website said Wednesday. ICQ - styled to sound like "I seek you" - was developed by a group of Israeli programmers in 1996 as a way for users to text chat in real-time, a novelty in the mid-1990s. Early internet giant AOL snapped it up in 1998 and it grew into