Digital Sky Technologies, the largest internet firm in Eastern Europe has agreed to buy instant messaging platform ICQ from AOL at a cost of $187.5 million. The platform, while not the most popular in the United States is still considered the most popular in Russian and various other parts of Europe.

AOL recently announced a 58 percent drop in profits and was eager to offload services they didn’t fully support. Digital Sky also owns a stake in various other internet firms, including Facebook app creator Zynga, makers of Farmville.

ICQ was purchased by AOL in 1996 and offers support in 16 languages. According to Electronista:

ICQ has over 32 million unique visitors per month. It has a large presence in Russia, Germany, Czech Republic and Israel, but has lost much of its traction in North America and Europe to AIM and Windows Live.

Does anyone in the U.S. still use ICQ, let us know, just out of curiosity.

Russian Firm Buys ICQ From AOL For Nearly $200 Million is a post from: The Inquisitr

Starting today, you can set up a Meebo account and communicate with both MySpace and Facebook friends from a single interface. Meebo also already supports AIM, Yahoo IM, MSN, Gtalk, and ICQ, among other platforms. It doesn’t require any program download to use its services, either.

The move follows a string of other successes in recent months. Meebo launched a partnership with Universal Music just weeks ago that’s brought videos by artists such as Kanye West and The Killers into its site. The deal also puts Meebo chat rooms on those artists’ own sites and social network profiles. A month earlier, Meebo signed on to handle all the chat rooms on Comedy Central’s election night Web site. The company introduced an Android IM app shortly before that.

Meebo currently claims 40+ million users and 5+ billion messages a month. It was founded just over three years ago and is based in Silicon Valley.

Meebo Unveils Support For MySpace and Facebook IM is a post from: The Inquisitr