The new is the well-forgotten old.
Russia's VK Group plans to restart the ICQ messaging service, as well as the corporate messenger of the social network VKontakte, Medusa reports, citing the Russian newspaper Vedomosti. It is noted that this was discussed even before Russia's attack on Ukraine by the company's top management, but after the invasion began, discussions began with the authorities of the aggressor country.
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A Vedomosti source claims that as of the beginning of March, it was not only a matter of restarting ICQ, but also of launching VK Group's own corporate messenger VK. These two areas are discussed in parallel.
VK Group expects to launch these two projects by the summer of 2022.
According to Mediascope, in February the most popular messengers in Russia were WhatsApp, which may soon be blocked due to the fact that Russia wants to recognize the extremist company Meta, which owns it, and Telegram.
Recall that ICQ was developed by the Israeli company Mirabilis in 1996, since 2010 is part of the VK Group. This service was popular in the 2010s, later replaced by other messengers.
It will be recalled that the Prosecutor General's Office demanded that Roskomnadzor block the Instagram social network in the territory of the aggressor country , as “publications with calls to commit violent acts against Russian citizens, including servicemen, are distributed on this network.” Instagram blocking in Russia started on March 14.
Facebook has been blocked in the country since March 4 for “applying censorship to the Russian media.”
