As expected, Russian investment group Digital Sky Technologies says it has reached an agreement with AOL to buy its instant messaging service ICQ for $187.5 million. DST, which has investment in Facebook and Zynga; South African media giant Naspers, which holds a 30 percent stake in China’s Tencent, had been the front-runner among a number of other eastern European companies for the past few weeks. The news comes out ahead of AOL’s Q1 earnings this morning. The $187.5 million price is well below the $200- to $250 million AOL had reportedly been asking for, not to mention the $287 million base price that AOL bought ICQ for in 1998.
ICQ, which was founded and run from Israel, is mostly used in its home country, as well as Russia, Germany and the Czech Republic. In an e-mail statement, an AOL rep said that the deal will allow AOL to focus more on its “core communications strengths in the United States and other strategic markets through AIM, AOL Mail and the company’s Mobile applications.” Over the last few months, AOL has integrated AIM with Facebook Chat and has launched Lifestream, an IM tool for aggregating communications.
More: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-aol-sells-im-service-icq-to-russias-dst-for-187.5-million/
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ICQ, which was founded and run from Israel, is mostly used in its home country, as well as Russia, Germany and the Czech Republic. In an e-mail statement, an AOL rep said that the deal will allow AOL to focus more on its “core communications strengths in the United States and other strategic markets through AIM, AOL Mail and the company’s Mobile applications.” Over the last few months, AOL has integrated AIM with Facebook Chat and has launched Lifestream, an IM tool for aggregating communications.
More: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-aol-sells-im-service-icq-to-russias-dst-for-187.5-million/
